Removing Black Bars from Video: Find the Source, Then Crop
Black bars come from three places: burned into the picture, padded by the player for aspect fit, or added by the platform after upload. Only the first kind is really in your file — diagnose before cropping.
Diagnose first
- Baked in: bars persist across players and window sizes — the picture itself contains them. Crop.
- Player padding: bars appear/disappear with window shape; the file is clean. Do nothing.
- Platform-added: bars show only after upload (portrait video in landscape feeds). Not a local fix.
Crop parameters
Cropping uses per-edge percentages to define the kept region: symmetric cinema bars typically need ~12% off top and bottom. Output resolution equals the kept region — quality is preserved, no upscaling.
Start conservative: cut 5% first and adjust. Over-cropping into content is unrecoverable.
Crop vs rotate vs resize
Rotation fixes orientation, cropping removes excess picture, resizing changes resolution. Each re-encode has a cost — combine deliberately in one pass where possible.
Portrait-to-landscape adaptation is not a crop problem: cropping the sides of a portrait video leaves a narrow slice. Publish portrait as portrait.