How to add a watermark to video
For a folder of clips, Star Watermark takes video and stills through one queue on a licence bought once. If you are already cutting in Filmora, its watermark presets brand an entire timeline without introducing a second application to the workflow.
The decision that actually matters is fixed or moving. A stationary corner logo looks clean and professional and comes off in under a minute using any tool on this site. A mark that travels is uglier to watch and genuinely difficult to erase. Choose based on whether you are asking for credit or preventing reuse, because you cannot have both.
A fixed logo and a travelling mark do opposite jobs
A stationary corner logo is the broadcaster’s choice. It reads as branding, it does not compete with the content, and viewers stop registering it within seconds. It is also the easiest thing in the world to remove, because the area beneath it never changes, so a tool rebuilds one patch and applies it across every frame.
A travelling mark is what Sora and TikTok use, and for precisely that reason. Because the background underneath keeps changing, a remover must reconstruct a different patch on every single frame, and the result degrades as it goes. Far more effective, and considerably more irritating to sit through.
- Credit and branding: fixed, in a corner, 4 to 6 % of frame height
- Preventing reuse: a slow travelling path that crosses the centre at least once
- Client review copies: large, centred, semi-transparent, with the client name burned in
What survives a platform re-encode, and what does not
Anything burned into the pixels survives re-encoding, compression and platform re-uploads, which is the entire point of doing it that way. What does not survive is anything stored outside the picture: most platforms strip metadata on upload, so a copyright field in the file header protects nothing at all once the clip is live on social media.
Resolution matters more than people expect it to. A mark sized for 1080p becomes illegible the moment a platform serves the clip at 480p on a phone. Size it as a percentage of frame height and then check it at the smallest resolution your audience will realistically see.
Marking a folder of clips rather than one timeline
Editing software marks one timeline at a time, which is fine for a project and painful across fifty clips. A dedicated batch tool applies the same mark to a folder, and the thing worth checking is whether it re-encodes the video or passes it through, because re-encoding costs a generation of quality on every pass.
For content you publish on a schedule, the better answer is frequently the editor you already pay for. A Filmora preset costs nothing extra and applies the mark before the export rather than in a second pass afterwards.
Swipe sideways for price, free export and platforms.
| # | Tool | Score | From | Free export | Best for | Runs on | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Star WatermarkStar Watermark | $39.95 once | Free tier does text marks only, and locks angle, opacity and layers | Desktop batch branding bought once | Win, Mac | Visit Star Watermark (opens in a new tab) | |
| 2 |  FilmoraFilmora | $49.99/yr | Free renders come out with a Filmora mark across the middle | Editing, removal and branding under one roof | Win, Mac, iOS, Android | Visit Filmora (opens in a new tab) | |
| 3 |  Canva ProCanva Pro | $18/mo | Premium assets keep their tiles on the free plan | Designs blocked by tiles on premium assets | Web, Win, Mac, iOS, Android | Visit Canva Pro (opens in a new tab) |
Animated marks, and when they are worth the trouble
A mark that fades in and out, or drifts slowly across the frame, is dramatically harder to remove than a static one, for the same reason Sora and TikTok chose that approach. Every frame presents the tool with a different problem, and errors accumulate visibly along the path.
The cost is that it competes with your content in a way a fixed corner logo never does. Reserve it for material where reuse is a genuine concern, review copies and unreleased work above all, and keep the fixed mark for anything published to build an audience rather than to be defended from one.
Where to put it so it survives a vertical crop
Clips get reframed constantly. A landscape edit becomes a vertical Short, a 16:9 export becomes a square post, and a mark placed against the far edge of the original frame is simply outside the new one. Platforms do this automatically and without asking, which means the mark you carefully positioned may never reach the audience.
Two habits solve it. Keep the mark inside the central 80 % of the frame both horizontally and vertically, which survives every common reframe. And check the result at 9:16 before publishing anything you expect to be recut, because that is the aspect ratio that discards the most picture.
The one mistake no tool can undo
A burned-in mark is permanent. Keep the unmarked master in a separate folder every single time, because sooner or later a client, a festival submission or a re-cut will need a clean version.
This is the one error that cannot be repaired with software. Everything on the removal side of this site reconstructs what sits under a mark, and reconstruction is an educated guess rather than a recovery.
Related pages on protecting work
The other half of the job, and what a visible mark cannot cover.
Video branding: the questions that come up
What should you use to brand a set of clips?
Star Watermark for a folder of them, on a licence bought once rather than a subscription. If you already edit in Filmora, its watermark presets do the job without a second application and apply the mark before export rather than afterwards.
Fixed mark or travelling mark?
Fixed, for branding viewers stop noticing. Travelling, for making reuse impractical, because a mark that moves forces a remover to rebuild a different patch on every frame. That is exactly why Sora and TikTok both chose to do it that way.
How large should the mark be?
Around 4 to 6 % of frame height, expressed as a percentage rather than in pixels. Check it at the lowest resolution your audience will see, because a mark that reads perfectly at 1080p can be illegible when a platform serves the clip at 480p.
Does it survive being re-uploaded?
A burned-in mark does, since it is part of the picture itself. Metadata does not: most platforms strip file headers on upload, so a copyright field protects nothing whatsoever once the clip is live somewhere else.
Our pick for marking a batch of clips
Star Watermark scores 8.4/10 on the same test set as every tool on this site. The money-saving way to protect work offline, assuming a desktop-only app fits how you work.