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How to Crop in After Effects: Four Steps (with Pictures)

Author by Vita

Updated on Mar 14, 2024

Don't be frightened by the fiddly settings and complex interface of After Effects. The way to crop in After Effects is actually much easier than you expect. And this article is about how to complete the task. Yet if a simple video cropper is more to your taste, you can try this one:

After Effects functions as an advanced animation and compositing application, skilled in creating sleek motion graphics and digital visual effects. Apart from applying stunning effects and animations to make spectacular videos, After Effects also owns a few entry-level features and one of the frequently-used basic features is cropping. If you’re going to cut off the edges of a video, remove undesired black bars, or adjust video dimensions, and have After Effects installed on your desktop, you can directly crop in After Effects without the need for a dedicated video cropper. So how to crop a video in After Effects? Let’s go through the detailed steps.


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Part 1. How to Crop in After Effects?

Add the video fileAdd the video file

Step 1. Import Your Video

Open After Effects, and import the video file by selecting File > Import > File….

The Region of Interest button The Region of Interest button

Step 2. Select Region of Interest and Select Area

Drag the imported video into the New Composition box in the middle of the screen. To make After Effects crop video, select the Region of interest button below the Composition panel as marked on the left image. Then click and drag on the video to select the area you want to keep and you can see that there is a white box around the portion you select.

Head to Composition Head to Composition

Step 3. Select Crop Comp to Region of Interest

Head to Composition on the top menu and select Crop Comp to Region of Interest.

Export the File Export the File

Step 4. Export the Cropped Video

Open the File menu again, head to Export and select a way to export the video. If you have installed Media Encoder on your computer, select Add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue and H.264 from the Format drop-down box. In this way, you’re able to export the video as MP4. Don’t forget to click the Render or OK button to finalize the process of crop videos After Effects.

Part 2. An Alternative Easy Way to Crop Videos

After Effects, after all, is professional video compositing software. Users have to face a steep learning curve to be mastered in it, thus, for beginners who don’t have video editing skills and only need to carry out some basic video editing jobs, After Effects isn’t an ideal option. Here is another simple program for your – HD Video Converter Factory Pro. It features zero-difficulty operation and rich functions, helping you to fulfill a series of basic video editing purposes. You can use it to crop a video, split a video into parts, merge multiple clips into one, etc. Now, download the software to finish your editing tasks with a few simple clicks.

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Part 3. How to Crop in After Effects Replacement?

Open the Video Converter

Before start, please free downloadfree download and install the software on your PC.

Step 1. Add Videos into the Software

Choose Converter on the start-up window, then click Add Files to open file explorer and import the video you want to crop. A quick way to add files is to drag them into the window directly.

Crop the video

Step 2. Crop a Video  

Click the crop button below each imported video, which can activate the video cropper tool, in which you can see there is a dotted box around the left screen. Click and drag the box to select the frame you want to save. The other way to crop videos in this software is to customize the aspect ratio. Check the Fixed Aspect Ratio box and choose an aspect ratio under the drop-down menu. For instance, you can choose 1:1 to square the video. The fine-tuning tools can help you accurately select the needed area. Select OK if you have finished the cropping.

How to export the video?

Step 3. Choose an Output Format

Before exporting the video, you’d better choose a format for it. HD Video Converter Factory Pro includes all popular video formats and profiles for mobile devices, TVs, projectors, and so forth. Click the format icon on the right side and choose a format you need. There are no extra installation requirements for this step.

Step 4. Export the Video

Click on Run to finalize the process. It will remind you to open the output folder when the process is complete.

In Summary

Crop videos After Effects is quite a easy task yet if you only need to do basic video editing, such a sophisticated and advanced application is overdone, especially when you need to take much time to become familiar with its terms and functions. That’s why we highly recommend you use HD Video Converter Factory Pro, the self- explanatory video cropper.

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How to Cut Part of a DVD on Computer

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For good reasons, you may want to cut some clips from your recorded DVD, such as adding them to your video projects or sharing them with others. WonderFox DVD Ripper Pro can help you complete this task by converting DVDs to digital videos and cutting the needed parts. It’s a good DVD editor, ripper as well as DVD ISO creator.

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