How to add a watermark to a video
A watermark is a small mark with a specific job: to say who made the video, or to make a preview less useful to whoever would republish it. Doing it well is mostly about the file you upload and the corner you choose.
What a watermark is for, and what it cannot do
Three situations justify the mark:
- Credit. Your footage is shared by a client or a partner and you want the source to stay visible.
- Brand. The clip travels on its own — a product video, a reel, a tutorial — and the logo is part of the message.
- Protection. You send a preview to someone who has not paid yet, and you would rather they did not publish it as their own.
On the last point, be realistic: a visible logo deters, it does not prevent. Cropping, blurring or painting over a small mark in the corner takes minutes for anyone who wants to. If a clip must not circulate, do not send it — do not rely on the watermark. What the mark really buys you is proof of origin and a reason for an honest client to come back to you.
Prepare the logo file first
A PNG with a transparent background is the right format. The mark sits directly on the picture; a JPEG brings its own rectangle of white or black, which looks like a sticker no matter where you put it.
- Export from your design file or your logo source, not from a screenshot: edges stay clean and the file stays small.
- 300 to 600 pixels wide is plenty. The tool scales the logo against the video, so a huge file only slows the upload.
- Make a white version and a dark version of the logo. A logo that reads well on white often disappears over a bright sky, and the other way round.
- For a preview watermark, make a file that says what you mean — "PREVIEW", "DRAFT", the client name. The tool places an image, so the wording has to be in the image.
Where to put it
The corner matters more than the size. The eye is drawn to faces, to movement and to text, so the mark should sit where nothing else is happening.
| Position | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Bottom right | The default: credits, most landscape videos | Captions and platform buttons land here |
| Top right | Clips with subtitles at the bottom | Platform badges on some apps |
| Top left | Vertical video for Reels, TikTok, Shorts | Little else; the safest zone on a phone screen |
| Bottom left | Talking-head footage framed on the right | Lower-third titles |
| Centre | Protection, not discretion | Sits on the subject; looks aggressive on a preview |
On vertical video, the bottom and the right side of the frame are covered by app interfaces: a caption, a username, a row of buttons. A mark placed there is half hidden before anyone even watches the clip. For 9:16 footage, top left is usually the better choice.
How big should it be?
The tool sizes the logo as a percentage of the video width, which keeps the result consistent between a phone clip and a 4K export.
- 10 % — discreet credit. Invisible in a thumbnail, fine when the video is watched full screen.
- 15 % — the usual watermark: readable, but not the first thing the eye goes to.
- 20 % — for previews and protection, where being noticed is the point.
- 30 % — a branding block, closer to a title card than to a signature.
If the mark carries a website address, it needs to stay legible: below about 12 % of the width, small text in a logo stops being readable on a phone. Test the first export on a phone, not on a large monitor.
Add the watermark in three steps
- Open Add a watermark and add your video.
- Add the logo file under the settings, then choose a position and a width.
- Press Add the logo, watch the preview, and download the MP4.
The logo is drawn at the final resolution, so the mark stays sharp, and the audio track is re-encoded alongside the picture to keep it in sync.
Burned in or attached?
Editors can also put a logo on a separate track, above the video, without touching the pixels. That keeps the original picture intact and lets you switch the logo off — but it also means the mark disappears the moment the file is re-encoded by a social network, or opened in a player that does not read the track.
A burned-in mark is part of the image. It survives re-upload, compression, screenshots, GIFs made from the clip, and downloads. The price is that it can never be removed from that copy, and that the video is re-encoded once, which costs a little quality. Keep the original file: the tool never modifies what you upload.
Order matters when quality matters
If the video also needs resizing or compressing, do it in this order:
- Resize to the final size with Resize video.
- Add the logo on the resized file: it is drawn at the resolution it will be watched at.
- Compress with Compress video if the result must fit an e-mail or a chat limit.
Adding the logo first and resizing afterwards works, but the mark is scaled down with everything else and loses definition. A logo made of thin lines is the first thing to look fuzzy.
Common mistakes
- A dark logo over dark footage. Quick check: look at the first and last frames, where the background is often brightest or darkest.
- Four marks, one per corner. It reads as a warning, not a credit, and it is the first thing a viewer notices.
- A watermark on top of subtitles. Move the mark to a corner with nothing in it, or move the text.
- Watermarking footage you do not own. A logo does not create rights, and adding one to someone else's video is the fastest way to a copyright claim.
- Forgetting the thumbnail. Many platforms take a frame from the video, so the mark shows up on thumbnails too — check that it does not land on a face.
What happens to your files
Both the video and the logo are uploaded, processed on the server, then deleted as soon as the job ends; the result is deleted within the hour. No account, no e-mail, no gallery of your files anywhere.