How to Crop a Video on Windows 10/11 and Online Easily

Summary: The default Microsoft Windows video editor has yet to offer the video cropping feature. Video cropping involves image processing algorithms complicated than trimming. After testing more than 30 tools on the market, we round up 7 best ways to crop a video.

When starting to find a free video cropper tool, you might be surprised that such a basic feature is missing in many tools, including native apps such as Windows Video Editor (Photos app) and Windows Movie Maker. In this post, we will show you how to crop videos easily.

If you also have a Mac device, you can read tutorials on how to crop a video on Mac using iMovie, FCP, and QuickTime flexibly without distortion.

How to Crop a Video on Windows PC (7/8/10/11)

Using VideoProc Converter

If you want to crop a video clip as easy as cropping a picture, with a cropping frame that allows you to adjust the size, VideoProc Converter is a life-saver. It is a light-weight and powerful video processing tool for video editing, converting, recording and downloading.

Inside the cropper panel in VideoProc Converter, you can indicate areas to keep or crop, easily change the screen size and dimensions of the video.

Follow the detailed steps below to crop a video quickly and easily:

Step 1. Install this video cropping software on your computer.

Step 2. Add the video.

• From the main screen, click Video icon, and hit the + Video icon to add a video. Choose an output format, such as MP4, MOV, MKV, etc.
• VideoProc Converter supports 370+ input formats, you can crop MP4 videos, MKV, MOV, AVI, rare formats and demanding codec such as HEVC videos.

Step 3. Use the Crop tool from the toolbar.

• Click the Crop icon to call out the editing window and tick the Enable Crop box to crop videos.
• Use Free Preset to drag the cropping box flexibly.
• You can also click the Preset icon and crop video at a fixed aspect ratio, such as 16:9, 4:3, 1:1, etc.

Step 4. Export the cropped video.

Once you are happy with the result, click Done to save the editing.

On the right-side panel, you can click Browse to indicate the export path, tick the box to use High Quality Engine, and hit Run to export the video.

Video Tutorial on How to Crop a Video:

Can I use VideoProc Converter on a Slow PC?

Yes. VideoProc Converter only requires the minimum 1GB RAM and 200MB hard disk space. Even an old notebook can effortlessly run it without a glitch.

Free Download For Win 7 or later

Free Download For Mac OS X 10.6 or later

For mobile users, click here >

How to Crop a Video Using Windows Video Editor

Windows 10 and Windows 11 have a native video editor that comes along with the system. You can find it in the Windows Start menu, or launch it from the Photos App > Video Editor.

Note:

The Windows Video Editor can crop video by removing black bars, converting 16:9 to 4:3, and changing horizontal video to vertical 9:16 or 3:4.

However, it doesn't allow you to freely adjust a cropping box to crop the video frame on Windows 10, nor does it enable you to decide the area to be shown by changing the position of the footage. Therefore, strictly speaking, you can't really crop a video in Windows Video Editor. It only works under very restricted situations.

Step 1. Open Windows Video Editor on Windows 10 or Windows 11 operating system.

Here are several ways to launch the Windows Video Editor on Windows 11/10.

• You can click the Windows Start menu, and type in Video Editor to launch it.
• Alternatively, you can open the Windows Photos App, go to more, and click Video Editor.
• You can also directly right-click on the video > Open with > Photos. Then Click Add to in the photos app, and choose to add to new video or existing video, then click View to launch the project.

Step 2. Create a New Project, and import video clips that you want to crop.

Step 3. Drag the newly added clips to the storyboard at the bottom.

• If you only want to crop one video, drag it to the first storyboard.
• If you add multiple clips to the storyboard (the cards at the bottom), these videos will be merged into one upon exporting.

Step 4. Use Windows Video Editor to crop video.

• If you want to crop the black bars, click the frame-shaped icon on the right side of the speed icon.
• If you want to crop the video to a different aspect ratio, click the three-dot icon in the top right corner, and change 16:9 to 4:3. Under the same menu, you can also make a landscape video vertical.

Step 5. Click the Share icon to save the video.

Note: Based on our tests, videos processed by the Windows Video Editor will end up large in file size. This is probably because this default editor doesn't apply an efficient compression algorithm to reduce unnecessary data. Plus, if you want to crop videos in bulk, you need to create a project for each video manually.

How to Crop a Video on Windows 10 with VLC (Windows 11/8/7)

Cropping a video on Windows 11/10 using VLC media player is complex. If you are expecting a simple workflow, then VLC is not the tool you are looking for.

For one thing, you need to manually set how many pixels you want to crop from four sides. But the problem is, most of us won't know the exact number to set. Plus, there is no visualized way to adjust a frame to crop a video in VLC, meaning you cannot preview the cropped content in VLC media player.

If you are still curious, or maybe you are a VLC hacker, then here are the steps to crop video frame on Windows 10:

Step 1. Open up VLC media player, go to Menu > Tools > Preferences (Ctrl+P)

Step 2. Go to the bottom left to tick show settings > All, so that you can find all the settings in the tree structure.

Step 3. On the left panel, scrolling down to find Video > Filters > Croppadd.

Step 4. Click on Croppadd, and you shall see the boxes that allow you to set numbers. The numbers indicate how many pixels you want to crop from top, bottom, left and right.

Step 5. When you finish setting the number, scroll back and click on Video > Filter.

Step 6. Tick the box Video Cropping Filter (or termed as Video Scaling Filter in other VLC versions). Click Save.

• Step 7. From the main interface in VLC, go to the menu and click Media > Convert/Save (Ctrl+R).
• Step 8. Add video you want to crop by dragging it into the working area, or go to menu > Media > Open file.
• Step 9. Click the fixer icon to edit the selected profile. Under the Video codec tab, click the Filters tab, and tick Video cropper filter (or Video scaling filter in other VLC versions). Click Save.
• Step 10. Click browse to select the output format and destination folder, and hit Start.

Due to limited space in this article, we won't expand this VLC method with pictures for each step. If you are willing to try out the 10 steps for good, read how to crop a video in VLC with pictorial instructions.

How to Crop a Video Using Windows Movie Maker

Many tutorials claim that Windows Movie Maker can help you to crop a video on Windows 10, but when you follow the guide step by step, you will find that they are actually talking about trimming, or cutting out a section to shorten the video.

In fact, Windows Movie Maker does not have a cropping tool, but you can circumvent it. The workaround is to zoom in on the clip. The result? A video zoomed in. In this sense, even if you didn't actually crop and remove the unwanted area, the output file still fulfills your needs.

Step 1. Install and launch Windows Movie Maker.

Step 2. Drag your footage into the working area, and click Animations tab from the menu bar.

Step 3. Crop video frame by selecting the first effects from the section featuring "Zoom in" effects.

Step 4. Set the Duration time. Make sure it lasts long enough to cover the entire footage.

Step 5. Playback and check if the unwanted areas are cropped by zooming in.

Tips: Since the zoom-in is a process, the beginning part of the video will still stay not cropped, you can then trim off the beginning part, so that the rest of the content is zoomed in.

How to Crop a Video on Windows 10 Using VSDC Video Editor

Most Windows video editors have the cropping function. The only question is, is it worth the time and effort to launch up the program and create a project before you can crop video area?

VSDC can do much more than cropping, and that might be overkill if you need a simple cropping tool, and less capable for batch cropping tasks. Check the following steps to see if VSDC is what you are looking for.

To get started, visit the developer's page to download VSDC.

Step 1. Open VSDC Video Editor, and click Create blank project. It helps VSDC to automatically save your draft editing.

Step 2. Import your clip. You can either drag and drop the footage onto the timeline, or click import content before creating the project.

Step 3. Click the cropping tool on the top left, and you shall see the cropper window pop up.

Step 4. You can adjust the border freely by dragging your mouse.

Tips: If you want to keep the same aspect ratio, press down shift and dragging the mouse at the same time.

What is auto cropping in VSDC?

This function helps you to remove black bars automatically. One thing to notice is, it also crops some content area. Why? Because this auto-cropping function is design to crop and fill the edited footage to full screen. If you only want to remove black borders without cropping the video content, free mode is more preferable.

How to Crop a Video on Windows 10 with Olive Video Editor

Olive Video Editor is an open source video editor in its alpha stage. It's young but quite promising, and it constantly updates. If you are familiar with Premiere Pro, you could instantly pick up Olive to crop your clips and photos.

If you don't have an adventurous soul to use an alpha version, there are other free video editing software that works nicely.

Before we get started, one thing to notice is the difference between using a simple utility and using a video editing software to crop a video clip.

Let's say you shot a 1920x1080 vlog, and there are something in the background you prefer removing. With a simple video cropper, you might just randomly crop some area from the left part and export, resulting in something like 1769x1080. While in non-linear video editing software, the underlining logic is different. If you don't care there are black bars after cropping and exporting, you can go ahead without bothering changing resolution in sequence settings.

Step 1. Launch Olive Video Editor and create a new project (Ctrl+N).

Step 2 . Go to New > sequence to create a new sequence (Ctrl + Shift + N)

Step 3 . Import your file into the resource bin at the top left section, and then drag the clip into the timeline.

Note: Though you can directly drag the footage to the timeline, it is a good habit to first import it into the resource bin. You would know the benefits when you have multiple clips to edit.

Step 4. Click the effects icon, and go to Distort > Crop.

Step 5. Within the effects control panel, scrolling down to find the "crop" control, and make sure the box is ticked. Now you can set the value to crop from left, top, right and bottom.

Notes: if you directly export video after step 5, you will find there are black bars surrounding your movie. Because the resolution is still 1920x1080, and some parts are cropped without zooming in to fill the screen. If you prefer not to have those black bars, you shall scale up the video.

This method is less flexible comparing Adobe Premiere, especially as Premiere now supports auto-reframe to crop motion objects intelligently. But you cannot ask for more as the editing program is free to use.

Which tool is your favorite? Do you have any special needs to crop a video? None of the above methods fulfills your needs? Share with us your ideas.

How to Crop a Video Online

Sometimes you only want to crop a video on Windows quickly, without installing the software, and that's when the online video croppers come into your aid.

1. How to Crop a Video Online at ezgif.com

Ezgif offers both a graphic crop tool and a pixel crop tool for those who prefer entering specific parameters manually to crop. Users can also lock the aspect ratio to one of the presets to make the video square, 4:3, 16:9, 3:2 and many more. Upon cropping, you can also choose to encode the file in MP4 H264/AAC.

Step 1. Drag and drop a video to the processing panel and click upload. Or you can click "upload" to select video file directly.

Step 2. Select an area for cropping in the graphical crop tool or input pixels in the corresponding dimensions.

Step 3. Click to confirm and download the video by hitting Save button.

Cons of Ezgif.com:

• No progress bar – you cannot pause, fast-forward, backward, or pinpoint to a single frame for cropping.
• No voice control – you cannot mute the video during cropping.

2. How to Crop a Video Online at online-video-cutter.com

Online video cutter covers the utilities of a cropper, cutter, trimmer, rotator, etc. Totally free and no watermark.

Step 1: Drop a video file to the working panel directly without signing up.

Step 2: Locate a frame where you want to make sure that certain parts can be removed from the original video.

Step 3: Click "Save" button on the right lower corner and then wait for the Download button to show up.

Step 4: Simply click the Download button to download the cropped video.

In the meantime, you can trim and rotate the video the way you like and even choose the quality settings to force it not re-encoding and remaining the same quality as original. For a single video cropping tool online, I'd say that online-video-cutter.com might be the best of its kind at this moment.

3. How to Crop a Video Online at clideo.com

Clideo is a popular online video editor, with features to trim, cut, rotate and crop videos. It offers 4 default aspect ratios to crop a video, namely, 1:1, 16:9, 9:16 and 5:4. With the fixed aspect ratio, such as using 1:1, you can freely adjust the box size while keeping it a square for Instagram post.

Step1: Upload video to the crop video page on Clideo.

You can drag and drop videos there to upload, or import from Dropbox or Google Drive.

Step 2: Drag the cropping frame to crop the video.

Step 3: Select an output format, such as MP4.

Clideo also supports videos in 3G2, 3GP, AVI, ASF, F4V, FLV, M2TS, MKV, MP4, MOV, MTS, etc.

Step 4: Click the Export button to save the cropped video.

Before saving it to the local drive, you can also continue editing, using tools in Clideo to merge videos, add subtitles, or compress videos.

Note: For free account users, Clideo will place a watermark in the bottom right corner of the cropped video.

Crop a Video Online vs Crop a Video on Windows 11/10

Although cropping videos online could be seemly burden-less and quick, it could be slower than you imagine during uploading, processing and downloading, especially under bad network conditions, and batch tasks are not supported.

To easily and quickly crop video on Windows without watermark, you can use VideoProc Converter which was introduced in the first method. Click the buttons below to download VideoProc Converter to crop video on Windows 11 and Windows 10/8/7, Mac version is also supported.