How do I remove black bars on a video?

[BlueSky]

I am new to Shotcut and hope that this isn’t too redundant but I can’t seem to figure it out:

I have a 720 x 480 video with black bars on both sides and top and bottom. I was trying to use a crop rectangular filter to eliminate the bars on both sides and then export the resulting video back out at a 1920 x 1080 resolution. When I export the file, the resulting video still has the same black bars that the original had. I am not sure what I am doing wrong but maybe there is no way to crop a 720 x 480 and then export it out at the larger 1920 x 1080 size…

I’d appreciate your thoughts on what I am trying to do and if there is any way to accomplish eliminating the black bars and having the video full screen.

Thank you!

[shotcut]

1. set the video mode to 1080p HD
2. add the Size Position & Rotate video filter
3. zoom in and reposition to remove black bars

P.S. cropping a smaller rectangle of a SD source and up-scaling to 1080p HD is not going to look nice.

[BlueSky]

Many thanks for the info and “roger that” on the output not going to look pretty. I’ll report back on my results.

[BlueSky]

Hi Dan. I just wanted to say that your program did what I had hoped it would do. I chose not to go the full 1080p route but something less and the results were good.

One other question. When I first launched the program, it wanted to do a deinterlace and on the first attempt I set the slider regarding quality all the way to the right and it produced a 40Gb file. What was done to the file during that conversion?

Thank you!

[SEMERENDO.cr]

What a good question! I think there’s a lot of confusion about this, but it’s easily solved by trying out the filters… I’m also not sure what Dan suggests, with Size, Position, and Rotation. I used this a lot before, with KDEnlive, but it required a lot of tricks🛞, like Gottfried Leibniz!

I think most people are looking for a magic filter (Crop: Source Video Filter), like when we set a background image🖥️, enlarged↕️ to fill it.

Now I’m recording a lot vertically, so I “make” the rest of my videos vertical.

In effect, assuming you’re going to work with a default resolution all the time:
Choose the resolution
Choose the filter
Crop the px to where you want it until it fills
Save the setting and select it later

Crop: Source Video Filter

Crop: Source removes rows or columns of pixels from the edges of the source video or image before the image is scaled and padded to match the current Video Mode. When cropping, selection is centered to the Video Mode because padding is used to maintain the aspect ratio and prevent the image from appearing stretched or squished. Keyframes are not available with this filter. [image] This filter can only be applied to Source or a selected clip; it cannot be applied to a track or Output because th…

Using presets

Hi everyone, I am new to this amazing program and are finding it relatively easy to use and I have created my first video of my brothers wedding…I have a question though in the presets dropdown nothing happens. I checked the folder of presets and there are many folders of presets in them. How do you access them…Is there a tutorial covering this?. Also how to add 3rd party presets…thanks Trev.

[daniel47]

@BlueSky

When I first launched the program, it wanted to do a deinterlace and on the first attempt I set the slider regarding quality all the way to the right and it produced a 40Gb file. What was done to the file during that conversion?

The rightmost quality is something crazy only movie studios use to keep the maximum quality of their expensive camera setups. Just use the first one, “Good” H264, unless you’re doing paid work and they ask for special/raw video.

Interlaced video is basically a trick old cameras used to save space while increasing resolution and framerate by only recording 50% of the screen in even-odd lines. But this trick makes it difficult to process video fast so the shotcut app recommends to convert it to an “easy” to process format where each frame is 100% composed.

You can just skip that dialog and 99% of the time it shouldn’t cause issues.

[BlueSky]

Thanks Daniel. Your program is very effective and a pleasure to use!

[shotcut]

@BlueSky

I set the slider regarding quality all the way to the right and it produced a 40Gb file. What was done to the file during that conversion?

It converted from lossy to true lossless compression, a fundamental concept in media files every non-mobile video editor user should understand.:

Lossy Compression | Codec Wiki

The dialog shows that:

When deviating from a default, you really should try to understand what you are choosing.

[shotcut]

Would this be better?

[BlueSky]

Thanks for enlightening me. HUGE in red letters is cool!

[daniel47]

Unironically I actually support this change, + the word BIG with bold letters.

And also in the codec panel if setting quality to 100% there should be a warning (similar to the one for changing aspect ratio), something like: “Lossless quality creates huge files!”