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At company that I work I got a problem. I had to edit one video (that client sent me), but I can't find any editor that is free to use (in company) and have option to crop video (video have big black margins that I have to remove).

I want to produce MP4 file (H264) that can be embedded on on webpage (<video> tag), but I can convert it later.

Is there any piece of software that can I use to solve my problem? I'm running on Windows 8.1 (64-bit).

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    What kind of video file? And you should ask your superior: f a client sends you data that your company can't handle, what is the policy?
    – user416
    Jul 30, 2015 at 10:18
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    You didn't specify an OS – I assume it must run on Windows? What exact features are a must, and are there any that might be nice-to-have (but not crucially needed)? From the context, you probably mean "crop" (remove those margins) instead of "cut" (make the video shorter by removing scenes/frames)?
    – Izzy ♦
    Jul 30, 2015 at 10:21

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I would check out This Guide, it shows how to crop a video in Avidemux, an open source video editor. Here's how it's done,

Cropping Video

Download the free Avidemux software from the project website over at Sourceforge. The program is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

Install the software and load your video files via the file menu into the application. You load the first file via File > Open, and additional files via File > Append. You then have to replace the Copy action under Video with another codec. I have selected MPEG-4 ASP (Xvid) for instance.

Click on the Filters button afterwards and selected Transform > Crop from the selection.

crop videos

Click on the Configure button afterwards. This opens a preview image of the video. Enter pixels in the left, right, top or bottom fields to crop the video. The values are immediately shown on the preview image so that it is easy to fine tune them. You can also try the auto crop button which picked up the black bars in my test video nicely.

crop video

Click on the OK button to accept the changes. You can then click on Preview in the previous configuration screen to see how the cropped video will look like. If you are satisfied close the window.

All you need to do know is to save the video via File > Save > Save Video or with the Ctrl-S shortcut. The process may take some time depending on the performance of your computer and the length of the video.

And that's all there is to it. This is without doubt one of the easiest way to crop a video.

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If you are comfortable on the command line, ffmpeg is a powerful tool that can do many different things, including crop. https://ffmpeg.org

To crop using this tool you will craft a dos-shell command like:

ffmpeg -i sourcefile.mp4 -filter:v "crop=100:100:12:34" croppedFile.mp4

You have to spec the pixels manually using x-y coordinates, but your results will be precise and repeatable. here is the help page on ffmpeg's crop tool: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#crop

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