Crop

Crop cuts pixels off the edges of a video clip, image clip or freeze frame. Drag the edges on the canvas when you’re working by eye, or type the amounts when you need them exact.

Keys: C
Where: Double-click a clip in the previewClip tab ▸ Picture ▸ Crop
Agent tools: set_video

Crop mode

Crop mode turns the handles on the canvas into crop edges.

Select the clip, with the playhead somewhere it’s showing.
Press C, double-click the clip in the preview, or choose Crop on Canvas in the Crop section.
Drag the crop handles.
Press Return to leave crop mode.

C beeps when no selected clip is showing at the playhead, because there’s nothing on the canvas to crop. It beeps on a text, shape or graphic clip too, because crop mode opens only on a video clip, image clip or freeze frame, and so does a double-click on a shape or graphic. Double-clicking a text clip opens its text editor instead. A matte track is the exception.

Going in and out of crop mode isn’t an edit, so it adds nothing to undo.

Crop handles

In crop mode the eight square handles become crop edges and the rotation grip goes away. A corner handle moves two edges, and a side handle moves one.

The area you’re cutting away shows as a faint white shape, inside a dashed outline of the uncropped frame.

A drag changes the crop and nothing else. The clip’s position stays put, and the picture doesn’t shift.
A crop drag doesn’t snap.
At least one source pixel always remains in each direction, however far you drag.
Press Esc during a drag to cancel it. The crop goes back to where it was, with no undo step.
Each finished drag is one undo step.

Dragging inside the box still moves the clip, as it does outside crop mode. With several clips selected, the handles belong to the front-most one and crop only that clip.

Leaving crop mode

Your crop stays when you leave. Any of these leaves crop mode:

Do this	Good to know
Press `Return` or the keypad’s `Enter`	Works wherever the focus is, except while you’re typing in a field. Caps Lock makes no difference.
Press `Esc`	Works wherever the focus is, except while you’re typing in a field. Caps Lock makes no difference. During a drag, the first `Esc` cancels the drag and the next one leaves the mode. With an action selected, the first `Esc` leaves crop mode and the next one deselects the action.
Press `C` or choose Crop on Canvas	`C` works wherever the focus is, except while you’re typing in a field.
Click empty canvas	This also clears the selection, unless you hold `⇧`.

Going into crop mode doesn’t move the focus, so these keys work however you came in.

Clicking a video clip, image clip or freeze frame that isn’t selected doesn’t leave crop mode. That clip becomes the selection, and the crop handles move to it. Clicking a text, shape or graphic clip leaves crop mode, because it can’t be cropped, unless it’s on a matte track.

With several clips selected, crop mode ends if the clip you click isn’t the front-most selected clip afterwards. That includes a ⇧-click that takes a clip out of the selection, or adds one behind the front-most.

Crop mode also ends if nothing selected is left on the canvas, for example when you clear the selection in the timeline. It ends too if the front-most selected clip stops being one it can open on, for example when you select a text clip in the timeline, or the playhead reaches a selected shape in front of the clip you were cropping.

The Crop section

The Crop section on the Picture tab has the same four edges as fields, for when you want an exact number. It shows only for video clips, image clips and freeze frames.

Field	What it does	Range
Left	Source pixels cut from the left edge	0 to 20,000 px
Top	Source pixels cut from the top edge	0 to 20,000 px
Right	Source pixels cut from the right edge	0 to 20,000 px
Bottom	Source pixels cut from the bottom edge	0 to 20,000 px

These are typed fields, with no slider. Each change is one undo step. Crop on Canvas under them goes in and out of crop mode.

Closed, the section’s summary reads none, or the four amounts in field order, such as 100·0·100·0. Reset appears in the section’s header while there’s a crop, and takes all four edges back to 0.

Left and Right together must stay under the picture’s width, and Top and Bottom under its height. Outside an action, if a number would use up the whole picture, Frame Job shows an error and keeps the crop you had.

How a crop works

A crop removes edges in place. The picture you keep stays exactly where it was on the canvas, so cropping the left edge opens a gap on the left rather than sliding the picture over.

The amounts are in the source’s own pixels, not canvas pixels, so they stay correct when you scale the clip later. Cutting 100 px from a clip at 50 % takes 50 canvas pixels off it, and the same 100 px at 200 % takes 200.

Position, scale and rotation go on measuring from the centre of the uncropped picture. A crop doesn’t recentre what’s left, so move the clip if you want that.

Fit to Canvas and Fill Canvas measure the uncropped picture too.
Corner radius and the shadow follow the cropped edge.
Reset in Transform leaves the crop alone.

Animate a crop

A crop can change over time. With an action selected on a single clip, a crop handle or a field sets the crop at the action’s end, and the edges move there along the action’s curve. See Set what an action animates to.

While you’re editing an action, the section’s Reset is hidden. Clear appears there once the action sets a crop, and takes the crop out of that action.

Good to know

Crop mode has no menu item. It’s C, a double-click, or the Crop on Canvas button.
On a matte track, crop shapes the matte, so C still opens crop mode on a text, shape or graphic clip there, and a double-click does on a shape or graphic. Those clips have no Crop section, so there are no fields and no Reset. To take that crop off, undo or drag the handles back.
Paste Attributes or an agent’s set_video can put a crop on a text, shape or graphic clip on any track. The crop draws, and no field shows it.
Crop mode doesn’t open on a nest clip, so C and a double-click beep on it, unless it’s on a matte track.
A clip on a locked track shows no crop handles.

With an agent

set_video sets a crop with crop, which holds l, t, r and b, each 0 or more, in source pixels. l plus r must stay under the source’s width and t plus b under its height, or the call gets an error and the crop stays as it was. See Tools: picture and grade.