How to crop, rotate and watermark a video

Separate frame shape, dimensions and orientation

Cropping removes edges to change the frame’s shape; resizing keeps the shape and reduces pixel dimensions; rotation corrects orientation. Decide which problem you need to solve before processing. A landscape recording does not become portrait simply by choosing a lower resolution. Cropping it for a vertical screen can remove people, captions or objects at the sides. Watch the complete sequence first and check where your subject moves. The crop position stays fixed throughout the recording: it does not automatically follow a face or adapt to the composition of each scene.

Choose the ratio and position the crop

Crop video offers 1:1, 16:9, 9:16, 4:3 and 3:4. It retains the largest fitting rectangle with that ratio and rounds dimensions to even pixels. Position values run from zero to one hundred within the remaining travel: zero aligns left or top, fifty centers, and one hundred aligns right or bottom. A centered square crop of the 480 by 270 landscape sample produces 270 by 270. If no spare space exists in one direction, changing its percentage cannot move the picture along that direction. Check the resulting image rather than expecting both controls always to shift it.

Rotate or mirror only when needed

Rotate and flip provides quarter turns and horizontal mirroring. A ninety-degree turn swaps width and height; mirroring swaps left and right. These operations have different effects: a mirrored caption reads backward, while a rotated caption changes its orientation. Check signs, clocks and any written information in the recording. If rotation must come before cropping, download the rotated result and load that copy into Crop video. Each stage can re-encode the picture, so retain the original and avoid repeatedly transforming the same exported copy merely to try alternative combinations.

480 × 270 → 270 × 270
1:1 · 50 % · 50 %

Add text that remains readable

The watermark accepts one line of up to eighty characters, one of four corners and opacity from ten to one hundred percent. Text size, from two to twelve percent, is measured against video height. White lettering uses a dark background and shrinks when a long label would not fit. Start with short text and moderate opacity, then inspect it over both bright and dark scenes. The label is drawn into every frame of the exported video. Changing it later requires returning to an unmarked source rather than editing a removable metadata field.

Review edges and sound as well

Check the beginning, a middle scene and the end, then play the entire result. Your subject should remain inside the crop and the label should avoid subtitles, faces or important controls in a demonstration. Audio is retained when it can be processed; listen for synchronization. A visible mark identifies a copy but does not prove ownership or prevent someone cropping it away. Download the file, open it outside the page and confirm actual dimensions before publishing. Preserve an unmarked, uncropped source so future versions can use different framing and wording without accumulating previous edits.