Some video recordings obtained by digitizing old film films, due to a mismatch in the aspect ratios of the original and the resulting frames, have an annoying defect, which is expressed in the presence of two black bars on the left and right of the image. This defect does not allow you to view the video in maximum resolution on a personal computer, even by expanding the player's window to full screen. However, with modern video processing tools, black bars in a movie can be cropped.
Necessary
is a free video processing program VirtualDub 1.9.9 available for download at
Instructions
Step 1
Open the video file in VirtualDub. To do this, drag the file with the mouse into the program window from the explorer or file manager. Either press F7 or select "File" -> "Open video file …" in the main menu, and then in the dialog that appears, find and select the desired file and click the "Open" button.
Step 2
Set an acceptable scale for viewing video frames before and after conversion. Right-click on any viewing panel, select the desired scale from the context menu. Do the same in the other panel.
Step 3
Open the dialog for adding filters. Press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + F, or select "Video" -> "Filters …" from the menu.
Step 4
Add the "null transform" filter to the video stream frame handlers chain. In the "Filters" dialog, click the "Add …" button. The "Add filter" dialog will appear. Find the line "null transform" in the list. Highlight it. Click the "OK" button.
Step 5
Open the dialog for setting parameters of frame clipping when processing it with a filter. In the list of the "Filters" dialog, select the line corresponding to the added filter. Click the "Cropping …" button.
Step 6
Trim the black bars in the movie. In the "Filter input cropping" dialog select such values of the "X1 offset" and "X2 offset" fields so that the black stripes disappear completely. The borders of the clipping zone can be changed by moving them with the mouse.
Step 7
Save the changes in the filter settings and check the result in the preview panel of the processed frame. Click the "OK" buttons in the "Filter input cropping" and "Filters" dialogs. Look at several video fragments in the preview pane of the resulting frame at a display scale of 1: 1. Make sure there are no black streaks.
Step 8
Put the application in the mode of direct copying of the audio stream and full processing of the video stream. Check the "Audio" -> "Direct stream copy" and "Video" -> "Full processing mode" menu items.
Step 9
Configure the codec to compress the video stream. Select "Video" and "Compression …" from the menu, or press Ctrl + P. In the dialog that appears, select the item corresponding to the preferred codec in the list, click the "Configure" button and set the video compression parameters, click the "OK" button.
Step 10
Save your movie without black bars. Press F7 or select "File" -> "Save as AVI …" from the menu. Change to the directory to save the file, give it a name. Click the "Save" button.
Step 11
Wait for the video to finish processing. Statistical information on the progress of saving the movie will be displayed in the "VirtualDub Status" window. The process can be aborted by clicking the "Abort" button.
