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Many recordings have black bars either on top and bottom or at the left and right side due to the various aspect ratios used, resulting in a 4:3 coded 16:9 movie showing black borders on all four sides in fullscreen mode on a 16:9 monitor (top and bottom because of the movie, left and right because VLC doesn't know they are superflous and that 4:3 has to be fit on the 16:9 screen). Cropping the black bars with AviDemux would require a recoding.

Is it possible instead to let VLC display only the borderless part of the video?

I.e. somehow provide a config file or initially choose a "zoom" section.

Bonus question: I'll award a bounty of 100 rep for any automatic on-the-fly border detection and removal solution, be it VLC or other means, as long as it's free.

Stevoisiak
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Tobias Kienzler
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9 Answers9

28

If you press C it will toggle through the crop ratios and may help you with eliminating the black bars.

iamktothed
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7

Well, I should have checked VLC's Video menu as I did while posting this question... There's the crop to 16:9 option I was looking for... Anyway, if you find an automatic cropping estimation method, the bounty will still be there.

Tobias Kienzler
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3

Simply go to VLC Player preferences > Video (you must be in "All" mode, not "Simple" mode). On the right-hand side, scroll down to "Video cropping" and type in either "16:10", "16:9", or "4:3", depending on what your screen's aspect ratio is. Press the Save button at the bottom.

If black lines remain, then they are actually part of the video as opposed to just an empty section of the screen. In this case, adjusting manually is the only logical option left.

Cody Gray
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Plagarized
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1

MadVR renderer (works with MPC:HC, included in the K-Lite suite) has an option to automatically detect and crop hardcoded black bars on-the-fly, so it works with movies that change aspect ratio during their course. Beware though, since it is not a simple crop based on preset height/width, it has higher resource requirements.

Krzaku
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1

Select 'tools', go to preferences, select 'Crop', and control the width and height of the frame until the bars are gone.

fixer1234
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user508215
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0

If your crop ratio is not in the default list Video->Crop, you can add your own custom ratios in the Preferences. Tools->Preferences. Select 'All' option in the 'Show settings' box in the bottom left. Then navigate to Video and enter your own ratio (e.g. 21:9) under 'Custom crop ratios list'. I used that because I got a 21:9 screen and VLC did not offer this option by default.

You can also crop a video directly in the Effects settings without changing your Preferences. Goto Effects and Filters->Video Effects->Crop and adjust until it looks good.

real_paul
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0
  1. Download MPC-HC
  2. Download MadVR
  3. Install Both
  4. Configure MadVR as filter in MPC
  5. Set crop and zoom black bars
  6. reopen the video file

The aspect ratio should now be adjusted on the fly. If not, try different video decoders

Worked for me, hope it works for you.

Tensho_C
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The easiest solution to remove blackbars (in other words zoom proportionally), is to use Increase/Decrease Scale factor hotkeys in Settings/Hotkeys. For macOS VLC these are Opt+O/Opt-Shift+O

qd3v
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-1

On Mac pressing Option+I auto crops black bars. The shortcut is actually pixel by pixel removal from top, but newest VLC autocrops the full video. Works brilliantly.

mrmut
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