Crop / reframe the source recording in the editor

The problem

When I record a browser window, the browser chrome (tabs, URL bar, bookmarks, extensions) ends up inside the frame. Once the recording exists, there is no way to remove it.

None of the current options solve it:

• Trim is temporal — it cuts time, not framing.

• Content masks cover the area with a glassy blur. That leaves a visible blurred patch across the top of the video, which looks worse than the browser bar itself.

• Area mode only helps if you remember before recording. If the take is already done — and takes with voiceover are expensive to redo — it's lost.

• Cropping the exported file externally doesn't work either, because the export already includes the background, padding and rounded corners. Cropping it cuts the frame itself and the result ends up off-center.

The request

A crop control on the source video layer in the editor: drag handles on the recording, plus numeric inputs for top / right / bottom / left, and free or preset aspect ratio.

Key part: it should be non-destructive and applied before compositing, so the cropped region becomes the video layer and background, padding, rounded corners, inset and shadow re-apply around the new edges. The result should look exactly like it would if I had recorded that area from the start.

Nice to have:

• Adjustable at any time, not a one-way operation.

• Independent of export aspect ratio (crop the source, then choose 16:9 / 9:16 / 1:1 for output).

• Auto zoom and cursor tracking should operate inside the cropped region.

• A "hide browser chrome" preset that crops a sensible amount off the top.

Why this should be simple to build

The renderer already places the source inside a background frame and already reads a moving sub-rectangle of the source texture — that's what zoom and pan do. Crop is the same operation with a static rectangle: one (x, y, w, h) on the source layer, applied before the existing composite step. No new render path, no re-encoding of the original file, no change to the export pipeline. Zoom is the hard version of this and it already ships.

Why it's valuable

• Saves re-recording, which is by far the most expensive part of making these videos.

• Rescues footage that is otherwise unusable — one forgotten Area selection currently means starting over.

• Privacy: removes tabs with client names, bookmarks and extension icons cleanly, without a blur patch drawing attention to the fact that something was hidden.

• Makes vertical and social exports viable, since you can crop to the content instead of letterboxing a wide desktop capture.

• Complements the existing content mask feature rather than overlapping it: masks for things in the middle of the frame, crop for everything at the edges.