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Remove Black Bars

Find and crop away letterbox and pillarbox black bars from a video, with edges you can fine tune.

Free, no uploads, no sign-up. Runs 100% in your browser.

How Remove Black Bars works

Twelve frames from across the video are scanned row by row and column by column for strips that stay dark, and the widest picture area is kept so a dark scene is never cut. The crop is done by the ffmpeg engine, with the sound copied as it is.

Input: MP4, MOV, MKV, WEBM, AVI. Output: MP4.

How to use Remove Black Bars

  1. Drop a video.
  2. Check the detected edges on the frame.
  3. Adjust top, bottom and sides if needed.
  4. Press Remove bars and download.

Tips

  • Shorter clips and lower resolutions process much faster.
  • Processing speed depends on your CPU; plug in laptops for long jobs.
  • Keep the tab in the foreground while encoding.

Remove Black Bars FAQ

Are my files uploaded?
No. This tool runs entirely in your browser tab. Files are read from your disk into memory and the result is generated locally.
Is it free? Are there limits or watermarks?
Free and open source (MIT). There are no file-size caps, daily quotas, accounts or watermarks.
Does it work offline?
Yes, once the page (and any engine it needs) has loaded, it keeps working without a connection thanks to the service worker cache.

Related tools

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  • Resize Video: Change resolution or aspect ratio with platform presets, filling the space with a blurred copy or a colour.
  • Rotate & Flip Video: Rotate a video 90, 180 or 270 degrees or mirror it, with an instant no-quality-loss option for MP4 and MOV.
  • Video Trimmer: Trim and cut clips with a visual timeline, no re-upload.

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