Using the crop tool and its drag handles in Cut by Zaweba
The crop in Cut by Zaweba is drawn on the preview with eight drag handles, kept in even video pixels, and set per video so batch jobs leave it out.
Cropping trims the edges of the picture rather than the length of the video. It is how you get rid of black bars, cut a stranger out of the side of a shot, lose a messy edge on an old recording, or focus on the part of a screen recording that matters. In Cut by Zaweba the crop is one of the filters, and you draw it straight onto the preview.
Drawing the crop
The crop appears on the preview as a frame with eight drag handles, one at each corner and one on each side. Drag a corner to change two edges at once; drag a side handle to move just that edge. To move the whole crop without changing its size, drag inside it.
That direct approach is quicker than typing numbers and easier to get right, because you can see exactly what stays. Line the edge up with the start of the black bar, or just inside the edge of the thing you want to keep, and let go.
Even numbers in video pixels
The crop is kept in video pixels, the real pixels of the video, not the size of the preview on your screen. So however big or small the window is, the crop refers to the same part of the picture.
The sizes are kept to even numbers. Many common video formats need even widths and heights, and an odd number can cause trouble when the result is saved. Cut handles that for you, so the crop you draw always produces a size that saves cleanly.
Crop is per video
The crop belongs to the video you have open. That matters when you use the Batch tab. Adding files in the Batch tab applies the current filters to them without the crop. Your brightness, rotation or speed settings carry over to the batch, but the crop doesn't.
There is a good reason. Different videos rarely need the same crop. Black bars sit in different places, subjects are framed differently, and a crop that is perfect for one file would chop something important off another. Leaving it out of batch jobs avoids that. If several files really do need cropping, open each one, draw its crop and add it to the queue with Ctrl+B from the tab you are on, so each job carries its own crop.
Jobs the crop handles well
Removing black bars. Videos that were letterboxed or pillarboxed to fit another shape carry bars you don't need. Crop to the picture and they're gone.
Reframing a phone clip. If the interesting part was off to one side, crop in and the subject sits better in the frame.
Tidying old recordings. Captures from old tapes often have a ragged strip at the bottom or soft edges; a small crop cleans them up.
Focusing a screen recording. Crop to the window or area you were demonstrating, so the result is easier to follow.
Getting a good result
Check the crop across the video, not just on one frame. Step through to a few different points; black bars or edges can shift between scenes.
Combine crop with resize when the result needs a particular size. Crop first to choose what to keep, then resize so the output is the size you want. Both are filters, and they are applied together when you save or convert.
Remember a crop makes the picture smaller. Cropping a large part away and then enlarging what remains makes it softer, so crop only as much as you need.
Turn on View > Show the filters in the preview to see the cropped picture live as you adjust other filters, and play through before you save.
Crop among the other filters
Crop sits with the other filters for picture and sound: resize, rotate and flip, speed, brightness, contrast and saturation, deinterlace, denoise, sharpen, a basic stabilise, fades and volume. Whatever you choose is applied when you convert, which only converts the kept parts, so crop, cut and convert all come together in one pass.
