How to Crop Video in Davinci Resolve? [An Easier Alternative Provided]

To start cropping videos in Davinci Resolve, you should download and install it on your computer. Just go to the official website of Davinci Resolve to download the version that is compatible with your operating system, Windows, Mac, or Linux. (Before downloading the software, it will ask for your information like your name, email, phone number, etc.)

Now let’s get started with how to crop video on Davinci Resolve.

Step 1. Launch Davinci Resolve after the installation. Go to the top menu bar and select “File” > “Import” > “Media” to add the video you want to crop.

Step 2. The added video will be listed under the “Media” tab, and you need to drag and drop the video into the timeline.

(You may want to crop the video for different purposes, and this post will illustrate them one by one.)

Option 1. Crop off the Black Bars of Video

Select the video in the timeline and go to the “Inspector” tool at the top right corner of the program’s interface. Under the “Video” menu, scroll down to the “Cropping” part. Double-click it to open the detailed content. Now you can crop the video from the top, bottom, left, and right as you like.

Option 2. Crop Video to Make Cinematic Look

Head over to “Timeline” > “Output Blanking” in the top menu bar. Then choose a fixed aspect ratio from 1.33 to 2.40 that you like. But note that every number lower than 1.77 will crop the video from the sides, and every higher number will crop the video from the top and bottom.

Option 3. Crop Video without Changing the Aspect Ratio (Zoom in)

Similar to Option 1, you need to select the video clip in the timeline and head to “Inspector”. Under the “Transform” > “Zoom” tab, hover your mouse over the boxes and drag to the sides to zoom in or out. (The link icon between X and Y means that they’re connected together. When you change the X-axis, the Y-axis changes correspondingly. You can disable it by tapping the icon to unlink X and Y.)

Step 3. Now you can export the cropped video.
1>. You can click “File” > “Export” / “Export Project” to export the video in DRT, DRB, or DRP formats. But then you need to convert the DRP to MP4 or other general formats for smooth viewing or sharing.
2>. If you want to export and upload the video to YouTube or other video-sharing sites, you can click “File” > “Quick Export”. Choose the preset profile, sign in to your social media account, and hit “Export” to render the video directly.
3.> Another way to export video from Davinci Resolve is to click “Deliver” above the timeline or select “Workspace” > “Switch to Page” > “Deliver” in the top menu bar. Open the “Custom” tab to customize the video and audio settings and modify the filename, subfolder, etc. Scroll down to the “Render Settings” tab and click “Add to Render Queue”. Then hit “Render All” or render any job in the queue. When it ends, right-click on the job to open its file location. Now you can view the exported video.

Actually, the Davinci Resolve crop and resize video feature isn’t hard to handle, but sometimes it may fail to work or even fail to install. If you already have DaVinci Resolve installed on your laptop or desktop, it's a useful tool. Otherwise, you may frequently encounter the error message “Failed to install Davinci Resolve 18 components”, such as failing to install Blackmagic RAW player, failing to install Davinci Control Panels, and so on. Even though you successfully download and launch it, you can also receive an “error writing to file” notice during the Davinci Resolve setup, in addition to some problems during the video cropping process.

WonderFox Free HD Video Converter Factory is a 100% free and easy-to-use video & audio processing tool that can act as a good Davinci Resolve crop video alternative to help users crop video more easily and efficiently. More than just cropping and editing video, this free video cropper can help you achieve more video processing tasks, including video compression, changing video formats, audio extracting, movie and music downloading, etc. With the intuitive interface and self-explanatory process, all the features are easy to get started with, even for beginners.

Free downloadFree download the software on your PC now and follow the steps below to crop video with Davinci Resolve alternative.

Launch Free HD Video Converter Factory on your desktop and open its “Converter” from the initial interface. Click the “+ Add Files” or the center “+” button to import the video you want to crop. You can also directly select and drag the source files and drop them into the converter interface. Then go to the bottom of the interface and click the inverted triangle button to specify an output folder.

Hit the fourth square icon below the video you import to open the video cropping window. You can freely drag the cursor to crop the video frame to crop out the unwanted parts. If you want to keep the same aspect ratio as the original video, you can choose the same aspect ratio under “Fixed Aspect Ratio”. Then drag the cursor to select the desired part. Fine Tuning can help you crop videos more accurately. Click “OK” to save the change.

After you have cropped all the imported videos, you can press the format image on the right side to choose an output format under the “Video” category. It is recommended to keep the same format or choose a format that supports the original video encoder. But you can also choose to convert video to H265 to compress the video while maintaining high quality. Finally, click “Run” to finalize the process.

Davinci Resolve crop clips can be an easy task if you only demand basic video editing. But you may be confused by the different ways to crop and export videos. That’s why we recommend a simpler video cropper in the post. It can help beginners quickly crop the video and do other simple edits.