Crop video

Crop Video Online — Free, No Watermark

Typical 30-second 1080p clip finishes in 5–10 seconds end-to-end
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The fastest free online video cropper. Cut the framing down to just the part of the video you actually want — a square crop for Instagram, a half-crop to drop a webcam overlay off a screen recording, or a custom pixel rectangle for surgical edits. Native server-side ffmpeg with H.264 + AAC output, delivered through CDN. No signup, no watermark, no Pro tier.

  • Native server-side ffmpeg
  • Up to 500 MB per file
  • Square + half + custom presets
  • Audio preserved
  • H.264 / AAC output
  • No watermark
  • No signup
  • Files deleted within 24h

Files are deleted from our server within 24 hours.

Trusted by creators at startups, agencies, and Fortune 500 teams.
Free forever — no signup, no watermark, no length cap.

How it works

  1. 1

    Drop your video onto the tool

    Click the dropzone or drag any .mp4, .mov, or .webm file in. Up to 500 MB per file — works on screen recordings, phone clips, camera footage, and Loom downloads.

  2. 2

    Pick a preset or enter custom X / Y / W / H

    Square (center) grabs the largest centered square. Half presets keep the top, bottom, left, or right 50%. Custom takes pixel-exact X / Y origin plus W / H — useful for trimming a known UI element like a webcam corner.

  3. 3

    Click Crop and download

    The file uploads to the nearest B2 storage POP, native ffmpeg applies the crop filter and re-encodes the cropped video with an ultrafast H.264 preset and AAC audio, and the finished MP4 is delivered through Bunny CDN. End-to-end is usually 5–10 seconds for a 30-second 1080p clip.

Why this is the fastest online video cropper

Browser ffmpeg.wasm croppers are single-threaded, cap out around a 2 GB tab memory, and crash on phone clips above ~200 MB. Most server-side competitors upload to one US region and stream the result back through one origin. We rebuilt the pipeline: presigned upload direct to the nearest Backblaze B2 storage POP, native ffmpeg crop on our server tuned for H.264 output, finished file delivered through Bunny CDN's edge. A 30-second 1080p crop usually clears in 5–10 seconds end-to-end.

Crop, don't resize, when content matters

Resizing is what you do when you need a specific aspect ratio and don't care which pixels survive. Cropping is what you do when specific pixels matter. If there's a webcam overlay in the corner of your screen recording, resizing won't remove it — it'll just shrink it. A crop cuts it out entirely. Same for a sidebar UI you don't want shipped, browser chrome at the top of a tab recording, or a logo watermark another tool baked in.

Sister tools

Cropped output is often the input for the next step. If the new framing should be silent for a Twitter / LinkedIn autoplay-muted embed, mute video strips the audio in a stream-copy. If you need the clip a fixed aspect ratio after the crop, resize video handles the scaling. Stitching multiple cropped takes together? Merge videos concatenates them into one MP4. Need to slow down or speed up after cropping? Video speed controller does that as a single ffmpeg pass.

Why this is the fastest online video cropper

Browser-side video croppers (ffmpeg.wasm) are single-threaded, capped around 2 GB of memory, and outright crash on phone clips above 200 MB. Server-side competitors usually upload to one US region, queue the job, then stream back through one origin — slow if you are not next to that region. We rebuilt the pipeline. Your file uploads via presigned URL straight to the nearest Backblaze B2 storage POP, so the upload step is fast everywhere. Native ffmpeg on our server applies the crop filter, encodes H.264 at CRF 23, copies the AAC audio bits when possible, and muxes with +faststart. The finished MP4 is delivered through Bunny CDN. For a typical 30-second 1080p clip the round trip is usually 5–10 seconds.

What does cropping a video actually do?

Cropping removes pixels from the edges of every frame so the visible rectangle gets smaller. It does not scale, stretch, or compress what is left — the surviving pixels are identical to the source. That makes it the right tool when specific content matters: a webcam overlay in the corner of a screen recording, a sidebar UI you do not want shipped to viewers, browser chrome at the top of a tab capture, a logo that another tool baked into the corner. If the goal is a different aspect ratio without caring which pixels survive, resizing is the move instead. If the goal is removing specific visual content, cropping is.

Pixel-perfect crops vs viewport-fit crops

Two different jobs hide behind the word "crop." Pixel-perfect: you know the exact X / Y origin and the W / H of the rectangle to keep — Custom mode is the right answer. Viewport-fit: you do not care about exact pixels, you just want the largest square, or the top half, or the right half — the presets are the right answer because they clamp to the source dimensions automatically and never error. The presets are also rounded to even pixels (required by H.264), so they never produce an encoder rejection mid-job.

Common questions

Can I crop a video online with no watermark?

Yes — this tool does not watermark the output. We re-encode the cropped video with native ffmpeg into clean H.264 + AAC inside an MP4 with +faststart. The result is identical in every way to what desktop ffmpeg would produce.

What if my crop rectangle is bigger than the video?

Ffmpeg rejects it with a 'crop area exceeds source dimensions' error. Lower W or H, or move X / Y closer to the origin. The presets (square + halves) all clamp to the source, so they always succeed — only Custom mode can over-reach.

Why does the file size stay roughly the same after cropping?

Cropping reduces pixel count, but the encoder uses the freed bandwidth on remaining detail. To actually shrink the file, run the cropped output through the video compressor afterwards — the combination usually halves the bytes.

Can I crop a video to remove a watermark?

If the watermark sits in a corner or along an edge — yes, crop it off. If it is centered in the frame, no amount of cropping will help. For centered watermarks you need a content-aware fill tool, which we do not ship.

Will cropping rotate or flip the video?

No. Cropping only removes pixels along the edges. If you also need to rotate or flip, run the result through the rotate / flip tool afterwards — the crop output is already H.264, so chaining the two does not compound quality loss meaningfully.

Does cropping affect audio?

Cropping only changes the visible pixel grid, but the export encodes audio to AAC so MP4, MOV, and WebM inputs all produce a compatible MP4 output.

How do I figure out custom X / Y / W / H coordinates?

Open the file in QuickTime, VLC, or your default player, hover the mouse over the top-left corner of the area to keep and note the coordinates, then do the same for the bottom-right. Subtract to get W and H. Plug into Custom mode. Five seconds slower than a visual cropper, but it always works.

Is my file private?

We accept the file over a presigned upload to our B2 storage POP, run the crop on our server with native ffmpeg, and serve the result through Bunny CDN. The source and output are deleted within 24 hours. No signup is required.

Is this really free? What is the catch?

No catch. Clipy is a free screen recorder; these conversion tools live next door as a free utility. No watermark, no signup, no length cap, no upsell.

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