A creator's file work is a publish chain: cut the frame to the platform's shape, compress it to a size the upload will accept, burn the captions, then pull a cover frame and an audio version. Each step changes the file the next step sees, so the order is not optional.
Crop and compress before captions, because burning subtitles re-encodes every frame and compressing afterwards would encode the captions twice. Pull the cover from the final file, not from an earlier cut, or it will not match what viewers see. Every step runs in the browser, so unreleased footage never sits on a server.
1. Cut the frame to the platform shape
Video Cropper has four ratios: original, 1:1, 16:9, 9:16 and 4:5. Pick one and the crop overlay shows exactly which part of the picture survives, with the strip placed at the centre, top or bottom of the frame. That placement matters more than it sounds, because a vertical crop from a wide shot can cut a face or a product out of the picture entirely.
The output resolution is separate from the ratio. The 1080p, 720p and 480p presets set the output height, so a 9:16 crop from a horizontal source comes out around 608 by 1080 rather than a full 1080 by 1920. When a platform or a client wants exact dimensions, switch to the custom size field and type both numbers.
One limit: this is a crop and a resize, not a reframe. It cannot track a subject, fill the empty sides of a vertical crop, or change what was shot.
Video Cropper
Crop to 1:1, 16:9, 9:16 or 4:5, choose the position, then export 1080p or a custom size.
2. Compress to the upload limit
Video Compressor gives you an output format, a quality slider, a resolution and a frame rate, so a 4K clip can come down to 1080p or 720p for a platform that re-encodes anyway. Clips under 200 MB and a few minutes long are the comfortable range, because every frame is processed on your own machine. The first run downloads the FFmpeg engine of about 30 MB, and later runs reuse it from cache.
There is no target size field. You lower the quality or the resolution and read the result, rather than typing a number in megabytes. For a long file, split it first and compress the parts, because a single pass over a very long clip is slow and memory hungry in a browser tab. And the output format matters: MP4 with H.264 is the safest choice for almost every platform.
Video Compressor
Set format, quality, resolution and frame rate, with live progress and no upload.
3. Burn the captions
Add Subtitles takes SRT, VTT, ASS or SSA and draws the cues permanently into the picture. You can set font size, text colour, outline colour and weight, position at the bottom or top, and the vertical margin. The file you upload is normalised to SRT before rendering, because that is the most predictable format for the bundled renderer.
Two limits decide whether this step is right for you. The clip is fully re-encoded, since captions are drawn onto every frame, so export takes roughly half the video length to the full length. And the renderer bundles a single Latin font, so Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Korean and Cyrillic scripts are not covered and may render as empty boxes.
Add Subtitles
Burn SRT, VTT, ASS or SSA captions with size, colour, outline and position controls.
4. Pull a cover, an audio version and a teaser
Extract Frames is the cover tool. Scrub to the moment you want and export it as PNG, JPG or WebP; PNG is the right choice when the frame carries text or hard edges. A run is capped at 30 frames for storyboards and contact sheets, with a single-frame mode when you only need one. Expect the frame to land a few milliseconds from the time you typed, because the decoder can only settle on positions it has decoded, so check the result before using it as a cover.
Video to MP3 drops the video stream and writes the audio on its own. Use 192 kbps for music and general listening, 128 kbps for speech, and 320 kbps for the closest match to the source. WAV is there if you plan to edit or re-encode later, but it stores uncompressed samples and runs roughly ten times larger.
Video to GIF handles the short teaser. Keep the clip between two and five seconds, drop the frame rate to 10 or 12, and reduce the width, because GIF stores every frame as a full image and can easily end up larger than the video it came from.
What this chain cannot do
- It is not an editor. There is no timeline, no transitions, no colour grading and no music track. Cutting and joining live in Video Trimmer and Video Merger, as separate passes.
- No non-Latin captions. The subtitle renderer bundles one Latin font, so CJK, Arabic and Cyrillic scripts are not covered.
- No fancy subtitle layouts. Complex ASS positioning, karaoke effects and decorative styling are normalised away before rendering.
- No loudness normalisation or chapter markers. A podcast that needs either has to finish in an audio editor.
- No target file size. Compression reports what it achieved; it cannot promise a platform's exact limit in advance.
- No publishing. Nothing is uploaded to any platform, and no title, description or hashtag is generated for you.