Easy tool for cropping 16:9 videos to 4:3? (for youtube)

Ok I have this video in wide screen format 1280*720. If i upload it to Youtube i get black bars (above and on the bottom). I would like to zoom in on this video so the black bard disappear.

What is the easiest way to do this?

 

hmm Try MediaCoder

 

Apparently VLC thinks they might be able to do it:

http://wiki.videolan.org/Transcode

What you're looking for is a program that will do what's known as "Pan and Scan", or cropping.

 

It looks very promising, I can manually select the area, but then I get some error messages.

Thanks, I'll try that.

 

VLC did not do the trick.

Any other program?

 

AVI DeMux or VirtualDub are two open source powerful editing programs.

 

Yep, VDub/VDubMod are good....

 

Tried Virtual Dub, it would not read the file. I've installed 4 different programs now, no luck. Mediacoder looks the most promising, but it does not seem to save it in 4:3.

Could anyone test what tool works for me?

Here's a 9MB MPEG file, I'd like to cut off a bit of the left and right, so that it'll be 4:3.
http://www.yousendit.com/download/Y2o5eFVlZ2pkMnV4dnc9PQ

 

PhilFlow i found a OSS App , try it

http://jahshaka.org/

 

According to GSpot, your sample is a PAL DVD clip. Opens fine in AVI Demux, which you can also use to convert it to FLV or XviD or whatever YouTube wants.

 

thanks for your reply but my intention is to change the aspect ratio, not the format.

Cool. I'll try that later.

 

Ok it seems I haven't been clear about what I want.

Have a look here: http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=5lnhL37V11s

<object width='425' height='344'><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5lnhL37V11s&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5lnhL37V11s&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width='425' height='344'></embed></object>

See those huge black bars? I want them gone. And I want to loose some space on the left and right.

 

Its possible in VDubMod. I haven't tried it in it, 'cause resizing is alot easier.

I thought you just wanted to get rid of the black bars.

 

This shows what I would like the end result to be, within the red box. Maybe I'm too much of a video editing newbie to pull it off.

 

Whoot! Virtdubmod did the trick. Mediacoder works too!

Many thanks to everyone

 

Just curious, how did Vdub do it without changing the format? AFAIK no VirtualDub variant outputs MPEG2.

 

I outputted to AVI.

I don't care what format came out though, I was in it for the cropping. As long as Youtube takes it, it's good for me.

 

Try using Total Video Converter a Very Flexible Software for Video converting.