How to Crop Videos in iMovie on iPhone/iPad/Computer

Summary: Read this blog and you will know how to crop videos in iMovie on iPhone, iPad and computer. Besides that, you will also know an easy and free way to crop videos without iMovie. Let’s get started.

With crop feature, you can either crop out unnecessary elements, or reframe the video to emphasize on something.

As one of the mainstream video editors, iMovie has crop feature. However, Apple hide it a few layers beyond the interface. That’s the main difficulty many people encounter while cropping a video in iMovie. Here in this blog, we will show you how to crop videos in iMovie on iPhone/iPad/Computer. Besides that, we will also tell you one easy and free way to crop a video online. Read on and get what you want.

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Part 1. How to Crop a Video in iMovie on iPhone/iPad

Before getting started, please make sure iMovie is installed on your iPhone, iPad and the video you are going to crop is also on the device.

Step 1. Open iMovie for iOS, tap on Projects and click on the "+" button.

Step 2. Select “Movie” and choose the video you want to crop. Tap on Create Movie button below.

Step 3. iMovie will open the video. Tap on the video timeline. An additional toolbar will be revealed.

Step 4. Tap on the tiny grey magnifying glass on the upper corner, this will enable zoom feature.

Step 5. When a notification of "Pinch to zoom video" displays, use a pinch gesture on the movie preview to zoom and crop the video. Click Done then export the video if you like the cropped video.

Part 2. How to Crop a Video in iMovie on PC/Mac

On computer, there is a Crop button which you can use directly.

Step 1. In the timeline, select the video you want to crop. Click the Crop button.

Step 2. Click Crop to Fill button. A frame will appear. Move and resize the frame.

Step 3. Click the "√" button to apply the crop.

Note

• 1. The frame is 16:9 at aspect ratio and you can’t change it.
• 2. To reset all crop adjustments, click the Reset button.
• 3. You have to pay to download iMovie to PC.

Part 3. How to Crop a Video Online

As you can see, it would be quite complicated to crop a video in iMovie on iOS devices and you can’t change the video aspect ratio on computer with iMovie. Therefore, we show you an easier way to crop videos online here.

The easiest way to crop a video online is via FlexClip. It is an easy-to-use and free video editor that supports all mainstream video formats. Besides the fact that it is free and easy to crop a video with FlexClip, this excellent video editor offers more space for you to crop. You can choose to crop the video into 16:9, 1:1, or 9:16. Now, let’s see how to use FlexClip to zoom a video.

Step 1 Click the Create a Video button to get started.

Step 2 Upload the video to the Media section and apply it to the storyboard.

Image Board: Alternative Way to Crop a Video in iMovie - Step 2

Step 3 Go to the zoom option, you can zoom in or out the video as you wish. Drag the most important part of the picture to the middle.

Image Board: Alternative Way to Crop a Video in iMovie - Step 3

Step 4 Go to Settings to change the aspect ratio. Save the video if you like it.

Image Board: Alternative Way to Crop a Video in iMovie - Step 4

The Bottom Line

That’s all for how to crop a video in iMovie and another easy alternative way to zoom a video. If you find this post helpful, we’d appreciate it if you can share it with others. By the way, FlexClip is also a good tool to make videos, like birthday videos, Easter videos, business videos. Give it a try!

Elena /

Member of PearlMountain Limited. Has a mania for video editing. Love to share photo/video shooting tips and ideas.