Cropping Videos on TikTok: A Lot Easier Than You’d Think

TikTok makes it simple to shoot and upload basic content. You open the Record screen, talk to your phone, add any cool effects or filters you choose, and you’ve got a finished TikTok video ready to upload.

There’s also a comprehensive suite of editing tools in the social media platform, but understandably, many TikTok users are too intimidated to try and figure them out.

None are particularly complicated, but one of the easiest-to-use tools allows you to “crop” videos; in other words, you can adjust their height and width. That lets your TikTok post fit the screen better, and it also gives content creators the ability to eliminate “superfluous” actions or items shown above, below, or below the elements of the video they want to highlight.

The most common reason for cropping TikTok content is to make it look good on users’ phones or devices.

TikTok and Aspect Ratio

When you think about videos that you see online and elsewhere (for example, on your TV), you’ll realize that the picture can have two basic orientations: vertical and horizontal. Most YouTube videos are horizontal, an orientation known in the editing field as “landscape mode,” while most TikTok videos are vertical (known as “portrait mode”).

The lengths and widths of each side are measured in “pixels,” which are best thought of as dots — even though the comparison originated in the good old days of analog displays and printers and is now outdated. The important measurement of any photo or video display is the “aspect ratio” between the number of vertical and horizontal pixels.

Standard landscape HDTV displays on laptops and widescreen TVs are 1920×1080 pixels; the aspect ratio for those displays is 16 by 9, usually expressed as 16:9. The aspect ratio most commonly seen on smartphones (which are normally held vertically, of course) is 9:16, and that’s also the native aspect ratio in TikTok.

If you shoot a video on the app with your phone, it will be 9:16 and display perfectly on most users’ phones. There’d normally be no need to crop it.

Some users might want to upload other types of content to TikTok or repurpose the content, though, and could find it necessary to crop a video or photo first.

• Video shot with a video camera often has a landscape orientation, and uploading it would lead to black bars above and below the picture and a small, “shrunken” picture. The same thing happens to square content, or vertical content shot on a different device. Rotating (if desired) and then cropping the video, both of which can be done in the TikTok Editing screen, allows you to choose the perfect appearance for your content.
• Video that content creators want to use on other social apps with landscape orientations may want to edit and crop their TikTok videos and download them to be used on other platforms.
• A video focusing on action in the middle of the screen may show distracting or undesirable material on the sides, top, or bottom. Cropping the video allows the creator to show just the action they want viewers to see.

No worries. It’s not as hard as it sounds.

How To Crop a TikTok Video

We won’t be discussing how to rotate a video in the TikTok editor, but it’s a simple process that’s accessible from the same screen where you’ll find the cropping function.

To crop your video:

1. Open the Create screen by tapping the “+” icon at the bottom of the app’s home screen.
2. Choose the maximum length of your video and hit the white button to record. When done, tap the checkmark to move to the Editing screen. (If you’re going to upload video from your phone’s camera reel to crop, do it by tapping the “Upload” button (or the thumbnail, depending on your app version) to the right of the record button.
3. On the right-hand menu of the Editing screen, choose the “Edit” icon (ironically, it’s a horizontal screen).
4. You’ll see your video at the top of the next screen and a scrolling menu at the bottom, Choose “Edit” (this time, the icon is a pair of scissors). The “Rotate” control is also on this menu.
5. Tap the “Crop” icon.
6. You’ll see a row of choices showing all commonly used aspect ratios. Select the one you want to use, and you’ll see what your video looks like with the changed ratio. You can maneuver the video on the screen with your finger to move it in any direction and make the content look the way you want it to look in the new aspect ratio.
7. If you want to crop the picture to eliminate material on the sides, top, or bottom, tap “Freeform” instead of a specific aspect ratio. You can then move the borders of the picture in, out, up, or down to create the final version of the video you want; just be aware that the video will start to look fuzzy as you zoom in.
8. When you’re satisfied, tap “Save” and your cropped video is ready for any other editing you want to do. You can then save or publish the final product.

After you’ve done it once, cropping (and rotating) videos will seem like second nature.

Most TikTok users never find a need to crop their videos, but it’s a nice option to have — particularly if you like the content you’ve created so much that you want to repurpose and upload it to a platform like YouTube, where videos with portrait resolutions are hard to watch and don’t receive much attention.