How to Crop and Rotate Clips in PowerDirector

Cropping throws away the part of the frame you do not want, which is how you rescue a shot with something distracting at the edge, or turn a wide clip into something that fits a vertical video. PowerDirector puts it in a window of its own, together with rotation, because you usually end up doing both at once.

Select the clip on the timeline and click Edit. Under the Video tab, in Tools, click Crop / Rotate. Unlike the rest of the Edit panel, this one opens a window of its own rather than filling the panel, because you need room to see what you are cutting.

There is also a Crop button in the toolbar above the timeline that jumps straight there, which saves opening the Edit panel first when cropping is all you came for.

Drag the edges of the blue box to choose what survives. The panel in the top right shows the cropped result on its own, so you are judging the finished frame rather than trying to picture it from the box.

The Aspect ratio dropdown constrains the box to a fixed shape, which is what you want when the clip has to end up 16:9 or 9:16 for somewhere specific. Choose Freeform to drop the constraint and cut to whatever shape suits the shot.

Those two are not exclusive. Set the box up freehand first, then click the lock at the bottom to hold whatever ratio you landed on. After that you can resize the box and it keeps that shape, which is the way to crop several clips to a matching frame you made up yourself.

Sizing the box is only half of it, since the same size in a different place is a different shot. Move the mouse inside the box and the cursor turns into a four-way arrow, then drag to slide the whole box around.

For anything that has to match rather than merely look right, type into the Position X and Y fields instead. Dragging by eye will not land on the same numbers twice, so this is the field to use when several clips need the same crop.

The same window rotates. Type a number into Rotation when you know the angle, which is the route for straightening a horizon that is a couple of degrees off.

Or do it by hand: move the mouse just outside a corner of the blue box until the cursor becomes a curved arrow, then drag left or right. That is the one to use when you are matching the angle to something in the shot rather than to a number.

Straightening by eye is much easier with something straight to compare against. Click the icon at the bottom of the window and choose Grid Lines, then pick how many divisions you want. A horizon lined up against a grid line is reliably level in a way that one lined up against the window edge is not. Click OK when you are done.