I find it really difficult to do a simple video crop.
Whether it’s on Shotcut, Windows Video Editor, or the new Clipchamp, etc… I always have to struggle to understand what I need to do, to be able to crop a video, such as removing the black area around, or just focus on a small element of the video, etc…
I know Shotcut supports cropping, but it seems to just crop the item selected, and not the actual canvas of the whole video being built. It appears I have to then change the actual canvas size, but I need to know in advance what is the exact width and height, which makes it really difficult for something that could be a very easy job.
What I’m looking for is something as simple as this:
allow me to select the area I want:
( “Sorry, new users can only put one embedded media item in a post.”
Posting the rest in replies: )
If you had 3 clips on the timeline and you cropped each one differently what would you expect your export to look like? There would have to be some black lines top/bottom/left/right.
When you start a project you should specify the resolution e.g. 1920 x 1080 @ 30fps you will be using. This is the resolution you should export at, since all the filters you apply to the project assume that is what you intend to do.
When you start a project you should specify the resolution e.g. 1920 x 1080 @ 30fps you will be using.
This is exactly what makes it hard, and I mentioned above:
It appears I have to then change the actual canvas size, but I need to know in advance what is the exact width and height, which makes it really difficult for something that could be a very easy job.
I don’t always know in advance what is the size of the cropped area I want.
I’m looking for an intuitive UI like the screenshots above, where I can easily crop the area I want, and get the desired output.
If you had 3 clips on the timeline and you cropped each one differently what would you expect your export to look like?
I understand that for 2+ clips, the UI suggested won’t be the ideal, but at the same time we’re not having a very useful feature for the cases where we have just 1 clip, just because of the other scenarios.
Perhaps if we had something like “Export & Crop”, where it exports the whole thing as is, and then allows us to Crop the area to finalize, that would resolve it, as then we’re back to 1 clip (everything merged/built, before cropping).
Or simply a separate standalone Crop feature, where we just select the video file we want to crop, and have that UI of the screenshots above, then Export.
Open your file, it will be displayed in the source player.
Apply a Crop: Rectangle filter and adjust the crop as you wish.
Note the dimensions of the frame
@Namna has given you an excellent example of how to achieve this in Shotcut, with, what is effectively a fiddly workaround. That’s because, as you’ve discovered, this is not what fully fledged video editing software that uses timelines and tracks (and not just Shotcut) is designed to excel at. Instead, there are various software alternatives that make this type of job quite easy. Handbrake can probably do it but Avidemux certainly can:
If you require better quality change the constant rate factor (crf) under the configure screen to a value from 20 to 15 or 17. Also, bear in mind that I’m on Linux, so there may be some tiny differences in the software layout but they are insignificant.
I’m curious why this step? If it’s just to export it then you don’t need to add the video to the Playlist or Timeline. You can just export it from the Source by making sure “Source” is picked where it says “From” in the Export menu.
@Namna - thank you very much for this suggestion and for the time taken for that.
@PoisonedSlice - I understand, and thanks also for showing the alternative. Both the suggestion by @Namna and Avidemux (seeing the video tutorial), seem to be requiring several steps for something that can be very simple, though.
This is the tool I’ve been using recently:
The problem is that I don’t really feel comfortable having to upload the videos to their servers, and I can’t guarantee that free tools like this won’t put some kind of watermark somewhere, etc. And these tools can always go away any day.
Hence I was trying to see if I could have Shotcut having this feature with a very simple UI like the tool above
If I have time in the future, I might try building this tool. It doesn’t seem to be a hard thing to build at all, and I use it frequently enough!
Thank you very much, again. I’m happy to close this thread if this is out of your scope to build.
Have a great day, everyone.
Because if you have closed the project, even if you have saved it before, if you open it again to make a correction on the framing, the file and its filter are no longer in the source.
Quite right and you are wise to be somewhat apprehensive. I hope you don’t have an Amazon Ring doorbell installed!
Anyway, I do understand your point about several steps being required. Since you mentioned you may do this with multiple videos, I would still encourage you to give it a go with Avidemux (or handbrake if you prefer) and I am confident you will find it is easier than it looks.
Another benefit is Avidemux allows for the trimming and cutting out sections of video without re-encoding, so it saves time with no quality loss. I use it on tennis videos for that purpose regularly.
Maybe there’s a tool out there dedicated to cropping and that would be easier for you, so let us know if you find one.
