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Crop a video

Drag a frame over the part of the picture you want to keep — vertical 9:16 for Reels, TikTok and Shorts, square, 4:5, or any area you like. Cropped on your own device, with no upload and no watermark.

Settings appear once you add a video.

Shape

9:16 is the vertical shape Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts fill the screen with.

Advanced 3

Longest side. A crop is never enlarged.

Quality

Done on your device No upload, no queue, no sign-up.

Bytes sent anywhere: 0 B

How to use it

Your video goes into this browser tab, is cut down to the frame you drew and re-encoded on your device, and comes back cropped with its sound. 0 bytes uploaded
  1. Add your file

    Add a video. A still from near the start appears, with a frame over it.

  2. Check the settings

    Pick a shape — 9:16 for Reels and Shorts, square, 4:5 — or leave it free, then drag the frame over the part to keep and pull its corners to size it.

  3. Save the result

    Press crop the video and save the result. Everything outside the frame is gone; the sound is kept.

Why it doesn’t upload

Cropping is decoding each frame, cutting it to the rectangle and encoding it again, and your browser’s own video encoder does that on your device. Sending a whole video to a server to have its edges trimmed off would only add the upload and the wait.

How to check for yourself

Worth knowing

  • Cropping always re-encodes the picture, so it takes longer than a trim and is not bit-for-bit identical. High quality keeps the difference invisible.
  • The frame is set on a still from about a second in. If the subject moves across the frame later, check the whole clip before cropping tightly.
  • A crop keeps fewer pixels than the original. A 9:16 slice of a 1920×1080 video is 606×1080 — sharp on a phone, but not true 1080p across.
  • AVI, WMV, FLV and other formats the browser can’t play have no preview: pick a shape and the middle of the picture is kept. They use the FFmpeg engine, a one-time 31 MB download.
  • One video at a time.

Questions

How do I crop a video to 9:16 for Reels, TikTok or Shorts?

Add the video, choose 9:16, drag the frame over the part you want — usually the person or the action — and press crop. The result fills a phone screen top to bottom. If it came from a 1080p landscape video it will be 606×1080; the apps upscale that without complaint.

Does cropping reduce the video quality?

Cropping throws away the pixels outside the frame, and the rest is re-encoded. At High quality the re-encode is invisible. What changes is the resolution: you keep only the part you framed, so a small crop of a big video is a small video.

What is the difference between cropping and trimming a video?

Cropping cuts the edges off the picture — the same length, a smaller frame. Trimming cuts time off the start or end — the same frame, a shorter clip. For trimming, use Trim Video, which doesn’t re-encode at all.

Can I crop out a watermark or logo in the corner?

Only if you own the video. Cropping your own footage to lose a corner is fine; cropping away a creator’s or a stock library’s watermark from their work is usually against their license and, in many places, the law. The tool has no special watermark mode — it simply keeps the rectangle you draw.

Is the sound kept?

Yes. The picture is cropped and the sound track is carried across unchanged, re-encoded only if the format you save as needs a different kind of audio.

Is my video uploaded?

No. The still, the frame and the encoding all happen in this tab, using your device’s own video encoder. The network log under the tool shows the page’s own code loading and nothing going out.

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