Crop cuts the edges off. Reframe shrinks the picture to fit.
Both change the shape of your frame; only one of them loses picture. Crop a 1920×1080 clip to 9:16 and Crisp returns 608×1080 — the centre rectangle, with 68% of the width discarded. Ask instead to make it vertical and Reframe returns 1080×1920, the whole shot intact at 1080×608 with a blurred copy of itself filling the space above and below. Crop keeps resolution and loses picture. Reframe keeps picture and loses resolution.
One word covers both jobs — cutting a subject out of a wide shot, and getting a landscape clip to play full-screen on a phone — so most people never learn there is a choice. Crisp keeps them apart.
The same clip, both ways
These are the outputs of both lanes on the same sources. Crisp prints the result dimensions back when a job finishes — Crop to 9:16 · 608×1080, Reframe · 9:16 (1080×1920) — so you can check this on your own footage in one pass.
| Source | What you ask | Output file | What is in it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1920×1080 | "crop it to 9:16" | 608×1080 | the centre 608 columns. The 1,312 either side are gone. |
| 1920×1080 | "make it vertical" | 1080×1920 | the whole frame, redrawn at 1080×608, blurred fill above and below. |
| 2880×2160 | "crop it to 16:9" | 2880×1620 | full width at full resolution; 540 rows trimmed, half from each end. |
| 2880×2160 | "make it widescreen" | 1920×1080 | the whole frame, redrawn at 1440×1080, blurred fill down each side. |
Read the last two rows together: from one source, for one requested shape, Crop hands back a 2880-pixel-wide file and Reframe a 1920-pixel-wide one. Neither is the better answer — they answer different questions.
The verb decides, not the ratio you name
This is the part that surprises people. Both lanes accept 9:16, so naming the ratio does not pick one — the verb does:
- "crop it to 9:16" → Crop. The plan reads Crop to 9:16.
- "make it vertical" → Reframe. The plan reads Reframe to 9:16 (fit the whole frame + blurred fill).
- "crop to square" → Crop, 1:1. "make it 4:5" → Reframe, 4:5.
- "for TikTok", with no crop verb in the sentence → Reframe.
Crisp shows the plan before it runs, so the distinction is visible while you can still change it. If the line says "fit the whole frame + blurred fill" and you wanted the subject to fill the screen, that is the cue to say "crop it to" instead.
Which one you actually want
Crop, when the thing you care about sits near the middle and you want it to fill the screen: a talking head in a wide shot, a whiteboard, a product on a table. You keep the source's own resolution — nothing is enlarged or resampled — and you pay in picture, because everything outside the rectangle is gone for good.
Reframe, when the edges carry something: a second person, a scoreboard, a caption already burned into the footage, a gesture that leaves frame. You keep every pixel of the shot and pay in size — the picture is redrawn smaller inside the new shape, with a blurred, zoomed copy of the same frame behind it instead of flat black.
A tiebreaker that works: if you cannot say out loud what you are willing to lose from the edges, you want Reframe. And if you simply want to sit closer to the middle without changing shape at all, there is a third Crop mode for that — "crop in a bit" is 1.1×, "zoom in 2x" is 2×, "a lot tighter" is 1.6×, up to a 3× ceiling.
Reframe always lands on a 1080 canvas
Reframe has four fixed canvases — 1080×1920 vertical, 1080×1080 square, 1080×1350 portrait, 1920×1080 widescreen — and the output is that canvas every time, whatever you feed it. The picture is rescaled to fit: up from a small source and down from a large one, which is why the 2880×2160 clip above came back 1920×1080. That is not a setting you can raise.
Crop does the opposite and never resizes at all. The output is the crop rectangle, which is why a 9:16 crop of a 1080p clip is 608 pixels wide — under the 1080 vertical platforms prefer. Neither lane runs the AI upscaler. If you want a tight crop and a full-size vertical file, crop first, then run the upscaler over the result as a second pass.
Crop takes six shapes; Reframe takes four
Crop: 1:1, 4:5, 9:16, 16:9, 4:3 and 3:4. Reframe: 9:16, 1:1, 4:5 and 16:9. The two extra shapes are the archival ones, which is why "make it 4:3" gets a real answer rather than a shrug:
What Crisp says when you ask for 4:3
Crisp reframes to four shapes — vertical (9:16), square (1:1), portrait (4:5) and widescreen (16:9) — so it can't pad out to 4:3. It can CROP to 4:3 though: say “crop it to 4:3”, which trims the edges instead of adding bars.
Ask for a shape neither lane has — "make it 21:9", "make it cinemascope", "make it 2.35:1" — and Crisp reads the number and names both lists rather than pretending not to understand. Ask for the shape your clip already is and it says so, instead of re-encoding the same picture.
Black bars are a third thing entirely
Removing letterbox is not a ratio crop and has its own mode. A detection pass samples from about 10% into the clip — far enough in that a fade-from-black intro cannot fool it — finds the content rectangle inside the bars and crops to exactly that. On a 1920×1080 file carrying an 816-pixel-tall picture the result is 1920×816 taken from y=132: the bars, and only the bars. If the frame is already full, Crisp says so and does nothing.
The mirror image goes the other way. Blurred bars are not damage to remove, they are the Reframe look — so "blurred bars on the sides" is answered with a question: "Blurred bars come from fitting the whole picture into a new shape — which shape? 'make it vertical' for TikTok or 'make it square'."
What neither lane will do
- One edge on its own. "Crop 100px off the bottom" is refused, with the three things that work instead: crop tighter, crop to a shape, crop the black bars.
- Off-centre. Crop takes the middle, so "crop just the left half" gets that same answer. There is no drag-a-rectangle crop.
- Zoom out. Nothing exists outside the frame; Crisp says so, then points at Reframe.
- Part of a clip. "Crisp changes a whole clip at a time… Split the clip where you want the change to start (press S, or right-click → Split here), then apply it to that piece."
- Part of the frame. No mask, no region tool: an edit reaches the whole picture, or you crop in from the centre first.
- Photos. Both lanes are video-only — "Crop is for videos — pick a video clip."
- Two edits in one sentence. Pair a crop with a bigger job and the plan you get back will not contain both. Ask for one change per pass, and read the plan before you run it.
Running it
Drag the clip onto the free Crisp app for Mac and type what you want, or pick the lane by hand — Crop has three modes (Black bars, To ratio, Crop in), Reframe has its four canvases. The plan names the lane and the shape before anything runs. Crisp hardware-encodes through VideoToolbox, stream-copies the audio, and writes the result beside your original atomically, so it appears finished or not at all. Free covers one file at a time; batch, Max quality and no watermark are a one-time $129 · or 4 × $32.25.
Try it on a clip you know
Crop one copy, reframe another, put them side by side. It is the choice you will be making every time after that.
Download Crisp for MacApple Silicon · macOS 26+ · Notarized
Questions people actually ask
Should I crop to 9:16 or reframe to 9:16?
Crop if the subject is in the middle and you want it to fill the screen: you keep the source's resolution and lose the edges. Reframe if anything near the edges matters.
Why is my 9:16 crop only 608 pixels wide?
Crop does not resize. It takes the largest 9:16 rectangle that fits your frame — on a 1920×1080 clip, 608×1080 — and encodes that. For a 1080-wide vertical file use Reframe, or crop first and upscale the result.
Can Crisp crop one edge, or crop off-centre?
No, and it tells you instead of doing something else. Crop works from the centre, to an aspect ratio, or off black bars — "crop the top off" and "crop just the left half" both get that explanation and the alternatives.
Does cropping re-encode the audio?
No. Every audio stream is mapped and stream-copied, so a two-track screen recording comes out with both tracks; Crisp retries once at 256 kbps AAC only if the container cannot carry the source codec. The picture is re-encoded, because a crop changes every frame.
Can I crop just part of a clip, or one clip on the timeline?
Crisp applies an edit to a whole clip — split it first if the change should start partway through. On the timeline the Editor's per-clip tools include Reframe, which bakes a new file for the selected clip and can be reverted, but there is no per-clip Crop.
Related guides
Make a video vertical · Add a border · Trim a video · Upscale a video
Background: what changing the frame shape costs.