You have great footage for your next Premiere Pro project. But maybe that footage is even better if you crop it to focus on the action. You can do exactly that when you crop in Premiere to zoom in on the most relevant details.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to crop video in Premiere Pro. It’s an easy skill that helps you reduce distractions and zone in.
Why Crop Video in Premiere Pro?
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to crop a video in Premiere Pro. But why is this useful? How can cropping in Premiere Pro help your videos look their best?
In fact, this feature offers key advantages. Consider these:
- The ability to focus viewers’ attention. Want viewers to see only a certain part of a video frame? Cropping lets you do this. You can remove unwanted objects and focus on key areas. It removes distractions.
- The ability to add split screens. Want to have more than one video clip showing at once in your project? Cropping helps you fit multiple clips into a single view. Imagine split-screens, picture-in-picture effects, and more.
- The ability to fit videos to a certain shape or size. Need a square video for social media, but you’ve filmed in a wide aspect ratio? Cropping helps you scale things to the shape and size that you need.
As you can see, it’s useful to know how to crop a video in Premiere Pro. Now, let’s learn exactly how to do just that!
How to Crop a Video in Premiere Pro (Step by Step)
Knowing how to crop a video in Premiere is a vital skill. It pays to understand what you’re doing and how to get good results. When you plan to crop, it’s essential that you start with high-quality footage. This is especially true if you want to zoom in on your cropped area so that it still fills the screen.
Using low-quality footage will result in grainy, distorted visuals. Always aim for the highest quality possible. For example, using 4K video is a smart approach if your final production is at 1080p resolution.
In this quick tutorial, we’ll look at major ways to crop in Premiere. As we do, we’ll use stock video from Envato Elements. Download the video clip if you want to follow along.
1. Open the Effects and Effect Controls
With Premiere Pro open, identify footage that you want to crop. Here, we’ll use the stock footage from above. It’s placed on the project Timeline, which is the panel in the lower center of Premiere Pro. You can see it previewed above, in the Program Monitor panel.
To add a crop in Premiere, you will need two more panels open. These are the Effects and the Effect Controls.
To open Effects, go to the Window dropdown menu at the top of Premiere Pro. Click Window, and from the list, choose Effects. You’ll see the Effects panel open as a sidebar.
Return to Window, this time choosing Effect Controls. This will appear on the other side of your video as another panel sidebar.
2. Apply the Crop Effect
Using this clip, let’s crop our video in Premiere. To begin, you’ll need to apply the Crop effect to the clip. To do that, navigate to the Effects panel.
Here, you have two options. The fastest is to search “crop” in the search box at the very top. When you do, you’ll see the effect listed below. Or you can browse to the Crop effect in the folder tree. It’s found in Video Effects > Transform > Crop.
To apply the Crop effect, click and drag the Crop label from the Effects panel. Move it over your clip in the Timeline panel. Release your cursor to drop it into place.
You won’t see an immediate change to the footage itself. But on the Effect Controls panel, notice that Crop is now a listed effect.
3. Make Crop Adjustments to a Clip
Move to the Effect Controls menu to edit your crop. Make sure that the Crop dropdown is open by clicking on the arrow beside Crop. Below, you’ll see that crops in Premiere are divided into four categories: left, top, right, and bottom. You can crop on one or more of these sides.
To crop by a certain percentage, type a new number into one of the crop boxes. For example, you might want to crop 25% off the top of the video. To do that, simply type 25 into the Top box, and press Enter on your keyboard. Again, you can do this from more than one side. Below, watch how it looks.
You can also crop with a slider. Notice that beside each of the directions, there is another dropdown arrow. When you click on it, you’ll see a slider bar. Simply click and drag its selector and watch as your video crop effects are applied in real time.
Finally, you can crop within the Program Monitor video preview. To do that, click on Crop on the Effect Controls. When you do, you’ll see a blue box surround your video preview. It’s a crop selector. Click and drag on one or more of the blue squares on this border. This is a true freeform crop effect that works in real time.
That’s it! In moments, you’ve learned how to crop video in Premiere. It’s a versatile and simple feature that helps you transform your footage.
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You Just Learned How to Crop Video in Premiere
This tutorial covered a simple but crucial skill: how to crop a video in Premiere Pro. With this new technique, your videos can focus in more tightly on the key parts of the scene.
Here’s a challenge to take on: practice your new crop in Premiere Pro skills. Open a past project and consider if it would benefit from a tighter crop. Practice this and compare your results today!