Crop video clips or still images

You can crop still images and video in your projects to get a close-up of a subject of interest or to eliminate undesirable parts.

Cropping is also useful if you have photos or video clips that don’t fit within your project’s aspect ratio. In such a case, you can crop them so that they fit.

The maximum crop is 50 percent of the image’s original size. If your video is high definition (or your photo is high resolution), you can get in quite close without much noticeable loss of image quality.

You can also crop video in an Event (source video). If you make a change in your source video, the change is reflected in any future project to which you add the altered video, but it won’t affect projects that already use that source video.

To crop a video clip or still image:

  1. In the Project browser, select a video clip or photo, and then press the C key or click the Crop button.

    Image of the Crop button.

  2. Click Allow Black if there are black borders on the image that you want to be able to include in your crop.

    Allow Black applies to photos only, not to video.

  3. In the viewer, click Crop, and then drag to resize and reposition the green cropping rectangle to focus on the part of the image you want.

    To resize the cropping rectangle, move the pointer to a corner of it until the pointer turns into a plus sign, and then drag.

    Image of the cropping window and its controls

  4. Click the Play button in the viewer to preview your work.

  5. When you’re satisfied with the crop, click Done.

Whether you crop media in a project or an Event, you can change or remove the crop at any time by selecting the cropped photo or video, clicking the Crop button, and then making whatever changes you want.