Today’s guide is a step-by-step walkthrough on how to crop a video on Windows 10 & 11.
There are several reasons why you might want to crop your video. Perhaps you want to eliminate some elements within your video frame, or you just want the entire video to focus on a more specific area.
Also, some social media platforms require your videos to have specific dimensions, and if not for the availability of aspect ratio tools, sometimes you might have to manually crop your videos to suit every platform’s video-sharing standards.
Cropping videos is such an easy task, but a lot of newbies tend to have hard time figuring out the difference between cropping, trimming, and splitting!
So, before we jump into the steps involved in cropping your videos, let’s quickly differentiate between crop, trim, and split.
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The Difference between Crop, Trim, and Split
Crop, Trim, and Split are all used to get rid of unwanted elements in our videos. However, there are a few fundamental differences between all three of them.
Cropping allows you to eliminate (crop out) elements on the top, bottom, left, and right corners of your video clips. Thus, with cropping, you’re changing not just the perspective or impression of a video but also its overall composition.
In the image above, cropping was used to eliminate unwanted visuals in the background to lay more emphasis on the butterfly.
Trimming allows you to eliminate (trim) unwanted content at the beginning or ending part of your video clip. This is a more straightforward procedure and is used more often than cropping. If you’re vlogging and have captured some extra footage at the end of your video, trimming is the best way to get rid of that fluffy part.
Splitting, on its own part, allows you to divide (split) your videos into different sections. With splitting, you’re not necessarily getting rid of any section of the video. You’re basically dividing the clips into different fragments so you can edit them individually.
Splitting is particularly used in more complex post-production projects where are several cuts in-between shoots. This allows editors to break out and delete unwanted parts, refine necessary scenes, and generally improve the individual quality of every shot.
Here’s a guide on how to trim, split, and merge your videos.
So, with all that out of the way, let’s get to the meat of this guide!
How to Crop your Videos with Animotica
While trimming and splitting are quite common features even with free video editors, cropping tools are not that easy to come by. Windows Movie Maker and its replacement Microsoft Photos both failed to provide this basic feature. The only way to get around this limitation while using these apps is to zoom the clip until it focuses on your chosen subject, but this is not as convenient as a proper cropping tool.
Fortunately, Animotica, just like other top-notch video editing software, comes with cropping tools that allow you to crop any video easily. Here is the direct link to download Animotica.?
So, how do you crop videos on Windows 10 & 11 using Animotica?
It’s very straightforward, but we’ll show you how!
Step 1: Install and Launch Animotica
If you don’t already have Animotica, you can install it here for free. Once installed, launch the app, and you’ll be ready to roll!
Step 2: Select Edit Video
Once you’ve successfully launched Animotica, you should see a home screen with a set of options. Under Project Prepare Tools, select Edit Video.
On the new page, click on Select A Video File, navigate to where you’ve stored your video, select the video, and tap on Open to upload it.
Once the video has been successfully uploaded, you would be taken to the project window where you can now crop your video.
Step 3: Crop Your Video
To begin, tap on the video thumbnail to reveal a set of editing options. From these options, locate and select Crop.
This will open up a popup window where you can crop the top and bottom as well as the left and right corners of your video frame.
Depending on what you want to crop off, you can adjust the relevant corners using any of the crop sliders shown on your screen.
Step 4: Refine the Cropped Video
After cropping your video frame, you should notice that a blurred background has replaced the cropped area. You can replace the blurred background with a solid color or a different blur pattern using the Background settings. Here’s a more detailed guide on how to change your video’s background.
Also, you can adjust the position of the frame to balance out the cropped area and the background using the Transform settings.
The Transform settings consist of four sliders: Scale, Horizon, Horizontal Offset, and Vertical Offset.
To move your frame vertically, you can use the Vertical Offset slider. To move your frame horizontally, you can use the Horizontal Offset slider. The Scale allows you to zoom in or zoom out on your video frame to completely cover or reveal the background. Horizon allows you to rotate the frame in any direction.
Feel free to play around with these settings and see what you can come up with!
Step 5: Save your Video
Now that you’ve completed your cropping task, you can now save your video. To proceed, hit on Save Video. On the new window, you can adjust the Video Resolution and Bitrate.
Animotica automatically sets the video resolution and bitrate to fit the best balance between quality, size, and export speed, so it is recommended that you leave the settings alone.
Hit Save As. You would be prompted to input a filename. Afterwards, hit Save.
Now, you can just sit back and let Animotica take care of the rest!
How to Crop a Video on Windows 10 & 11 – Video Tutorial
Conclusion
I hope you were able to crop your video successfully by following our step-by-step guide. If you have any challenges, questions, or recommendations, feel free to shoot them in the comments section.
Cheers!
