How to crop a video on iPhone with Photos and iMovie

How to crop a video on iPhone with Photos and iMovie

  • June 9, 2021

You just shot an amazing video on your iPhone and are ready to share it with your social media followers. That should be easy, right? Well, not necessarily. There's a good chance you will have to crop your video to fit the social media platform you're sharing to. Is this even possible?

The good news is that yes, it's possible to crop a video on an iPhone using either Photos or iMovie. The not-so-good news is that the size recommendations for videos are different depending on what social media platform you want to post on, and you may have to crop to multiple different sizes before uploading to different platforms.

How to crop a video on iPhone using Photos

The simplest way to crop a video on an iPhone is to do it within the Photos app. Here's how to do it.

  1. Open the Photos app and navigate to the iPhone video you want to crop.
  2. Tap Edit in the upper-right corner of the screen.
  3. From the bottom menu, tap the crop icon.
  4. A white frame will appear outlining your video. Use your fingers to drag the outline to your desired crop.
  5. When you are happy with the results, tap Done.

How to crop a video for Instagram

The aspect ratio for videos is different for every social media platform, so you may have to adjust your video crop depending on the platform you want to upload it to.

Instagram allows video placement in three different areas on the platform. You can upload a video to Instagram Stories and IGTV, or you can upload a video as an Instagram post. Here are the different video size requirements for Instagram.

  • Instagram Stories: For Instagram stories, you should upload videos in portrait orientation at a 9:16 aspect ratio with dimensions of 1080 x 1920 pixels. Landscape videos (16:9) will work too, but they will show up much smaller on the screen.
  • Instagram posts: For Instagram posts, you can upload square (1:1), portrait (9:16), or landscape (16:9) videos. Square videos are still the most popular size for an Instagram feed.
  • IGTV: IGTV video dimensions should be 1080 X 1920 pixels with an aspect ratio of 9:16. This is the same as the recommended size for Instagram Stories.

You can crop a video for Instagram to an exact aspect ratio using the Photos app. The method is slightly different from the method for more general video cropping.

  1. Open the Photos app on your iPhone and navigate to the video you want to crop.
  2. Tap Edit.
  3. Tap the crop icon at the bottom of the screen.
  4. Tap the aspect ratio icon (which looks like a segmented rectangle) in the upper-right corner.
  5. Scroll through your aspect ratio choices and choose the one that best fits Instagram.
  6. Tap Done to save the video to your Camera Roll.

How to crop a video for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Snapchat

You can use the method above for cropping videos before uploading them to any social media platform. To make things easier, we've compiled an overview of common dimensions and aspect ratios for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Snapchat.

  • Facebook: You can upload videos to Facebook that are either portrait (9:16) or landscape (16:9) orientation.
  • Twitter: Twitter allows you to directly upload landscape (1:2.39) or portrait (2.39:1) videos.
  • YouTube: For YouTube, you should crop your videos to 16:9 in landscape orientation.
  • Snapchat: Snapchat primarily uses portrait orientation at a 9:16 aspect ratio.

Can you fix a vertical or horizontal video by cropping?

What happens when you accidentally record a vertical video when you actually need a horizontal one or vice versa? While this solution may not be ideal, you can easily crop your photo from vertical to horizontal or horizontal to vertical. The downside is that you'll lose a lot of the scene you were trying to capture. In many cases, it won't make a huge difference, but you may occasionally lose important footage. In many cases, it will be easier to just reshoot your video.

How to crop a video in iMovie

Another way to crop a video on your iPhone is by using iMovie, which allows you to zoom in on your video, crop out unnecessary elements, or emphasize an element within the video. Cropping a video in iMovie is useful when you are also editing other elements of your video, stitching multiple videos together, or adding music. Here's how to crop your video using iMovie on your iPhone.

  1. Open iMovie and tap on the video you want to crop.
  2. Tap Create Movie.
  3. Tap the video timeline to open the video editor.
  4. Tap the small magnifying glass next to the video player.
  5. Use your pinched finger and thumb to zoom in or out on your video. The aspect ratio will automatically change as you do this.
  6. When you're happy with the results, tap Done.
  7. Tap the upload icon and then tap Save Video to add the edited video to your Photo Library.

Cropping your video may take some additional time, but it is well worth the results, especially if you're uploading your creation to a social media platform like Instagram or YouTube. Fortunately,  iMovie and Photos make this a relatively painless task.

This was about:
  • Videography

Tara Schatz

Travel writer. Photographer. Lover of dogs and the outdoors.