Video Editing: Crop Frame by Frame

Question

I'm looking for a video editing tool that allows manual cropping frame by frame. I have ~5 seconds of 1080p saved in .MP4 format, but it is in the wrong orientation and very shaky. I'd like to be able to select a 360 x 480 rectangle in each frame (only about 150 frames, so doable by hand) and then export a 360 x 480 video from these frames.

• Video editor than can crop down to a new (lower) resolution
• Ability to manually select the cropped area in each frame
• Can work with MP4
• Freeware preferred, but low cost OK (say, under $100)

I've searched around on this site but couldn't find anything with the frame-by-frame crop, so my apologies if I did miss something.

Answer 1

I have Magix Video Deluxe, which is a commercial solution ~70 € / 80 USD.

It can

• read and write MP4 material
• can deal with Full HD material (tested with Big Buck Bunny in 30 fps)
• can rotate by 90°
• can crop/zoom

Warning: it won't be as simple as shown below. You definitely need to familiarize yourself with the program. The below just shows that it's possible. You still may need hours to accomplish the whole task, even for a 5 minute video, depending on your knowledge.

Sorry for the German screen shots, but I hope you get the point.

1. To cut the video in pieces, use the T key. Once you have the desired start and end, remove the unneeded parts (Del) to shorten the video. This makes all the following actions faster.

   

2. Run the image stabilization (Shift+K). This should reduce the shake

   

3. Add a rotation effect to rotate by 90°

   

4. Add a crop/zoom effect to focus on the area you like.

   

Answer 2

FFMPEG or ImageMagick can split your frames out to individual images, say as png. You can then crop the individual frames, possibly after rotating to straighten, etc., in an image editor such as GIMP and reuse the original tool to create a new movie. With FFMPEG you can even reuse the original soundtrack as well. You might also like to take a look at MoviePy which can do some amazing things.

• All of the above tools are Free, Gratis & Open Source
• All of the above are Cross Platform and available for Windows, OS-X and Linux plus some other platforms.