[SOLVED] How to Crop an MP4 Video via Command-line?

Question

I have ffmpeg, mpg123, and mencoder. Does anyone know of a way I could use any of those to crop an mp4 video via command-line? I am trying to take off the black space above and below a video. Thanks in advance!
Last edited by tony5429 (2009-04-12 00:12:57)

Answer 1

I don't think it's possible to crop without re-encoding, but you can crop from the command line with ffmpeg and mencoder. Not sure about mpg123 - I think that's for playing audio but I could be wrong there.
Anyway, with ffmpeg you can do cropping by using -croptop, -cropbottom, -cropleft, and -cropright. So if you wanted to crop 16 pixels off of the top and the bottom, your command line would look something like this:
ffmpeg -i <input file> -croptop 16 -cropbottom 16 <video encoding options> <audio encoding options> <output file>
With mencoder you use the "crop" video filter, like this:
mencoder <input file> -o <output file> -vf crop=320:208:0:16 <other options>
where the "320:208:0:16" means that the resulting picture is 320 pixels wide, 208 pixels high, and the 0:16 is the x,y position of the cropped area.
These command lines are just really very basic examples - ffmpeg and mencoder have a LOT of options. Way too many to explain here. If you don't believe me, just try reading through the mencoder man page sometime. (There's an online version of it at: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html)
Hope this helps!!