How to Crop Videos

By  on  

During a recent episode of the Script and Style podcast, I had noticed that the video recording had showed a bit of our internal chat that wasn't necessary for our viewers to see. While there's nothing wrong with giving viewers a peek into the show preparation, presenting the best possible video is our priority. So how can we crop a video via command line?

The amazing ffmpeg utility allows engineers to crop videos with one easy to use filter:

# Crop an image to 500x500 starting at 0x0
ffmpeg -i sns-episode.webm -filter:v "crop=500:500:0:0" sns-episode-cropped.mp4

The crop filter format is easy to follow: {desired_width}:{desired_height}:{start_x}:{start_y}.

I've written dozens of posts about ffmpeg and how it has the power to manipulate videos in amazing ways. Now you know how to crop videos quickly from command line!

Recent Features

  • By
    I’m an Impostor

    This is the hardest thing I've ever had to write, much less admit to myself.  I've written resignation letters from jobs I've loved, I've ended relationships, I've failed at a host of tasks, and let myself down in my life.  All of those feelings were very...

  • By
    5 Awesome New Mozilla Technologies You’ve Never Heard Of

    My trip to Mozilla Summit 2013 was incredible.  I've spent so much time focusing on my project that I had lost sight of all of the great work Mozillians were putting out.  MozSummit provided the perfect reminder of how brilliant my colleagues are and how much...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create Spinning, Fading Icons with CSS3 and MooTools

    A goal of my latest blog redesign was to practice what I preached a bit more;  add a bit more subtle flair.  One of the ways I accomplished that was by using CSS3 animations to change the display of my profile icons (RSS, GitHub, etc.)  I...

  • By
    Duplicate the jQuery Homepage Tooltips Using MooTools

    The jQuery homepage has a pretty suave tooltip-like effect as seen below: Here's how to accomplish this same effect using MooTools. The XHTML The above XHTML was taken directly from the jQuery homepage -- no changes. The CSS The above CSS has been slightly modified to match the CSS rules already...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!