Crop vs trim — don't mix them up
Trimming shortens the video along the timeline. Cropping cuts the edges of the frame — the video keeps its length but shows less of the picture, zoomed in. You trim a clip to remove a bad intro; you crop it to remove a watermark or reframe for a new aspect ratio.
Pick the ratio the platform wants
16:9 for YouTube and TV, 9:16 for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, 1:1 for feeds and product grids, 4:3 and 3:4 for presentations and slides. Cropping to the platform's native ratio keeps your video full-bleed instead of letterboxed with black bars.
Crop in the browser with EditVideo
The video cropper on this site works locally: drop the file, pick a ratio — 16:9, 1:1, 9:16, 4:3 or 3:4 — then drag the video to frame the part you want to keep, and download. Nothing is uploaded.
What cropping costs in quality
Cropping zooms into the frame, so the remaining picture is built from fewer pixels than the original — and the export re-encodes once. On a 4K or 1080p source cropped for a phone screen, you won't see it. On already-soft footage, aggressive crops will look softer still.
Common crop jobs
Removing a watermark or timestamp from the edge. Reframing a landscape clip into a 9:16 vertical for Shorts. Tightening a talking-head shot so the speaker fills the frame. Each is the same move: cut the edges, keep the subject.