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

Incredible Demos

  • By
    MooTools 1.2 OpenLinks Plugin

    I often incorporate tools into my customers' websites that allow them to have some control over the content on their website. When doing so, I offer some tips to my clients to help them keep their website in good shape. One of the tips...

  • By
    WordPress-Style Comment Controls Using MooTools or jQuery

    WordPress has a nice little effect on the Admin Dashboard where it shows and hides the comment control links when you mouseover and mouseout of the record's container. Here's how to achieve that effect using MooTools or jQuery. The XHTML Notice that we place the links into...

Discussion

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