How to use the Remove Black Bars tool
- Choose your video.
- Wait a moment while the tool looks for black bars.
- Check the box it selected, and drag the corners if needed.
- Press Crop out the bars and download.
About this tool
Black bars appear when a video is put into a frame of a different shape: letterboxing above and below a widescreen film, or pillarboxing at the sides of a vertical clip placed in a landscape frame. They waste pixels, bitrate and screen space, and they look wrong when the video is re-shared.
This tool samples ten frames from across the video, measures how far the picture extends in each one, and takes the largest area that is picture in any of them. That avoids cropping into content that only appears briefly, such as a bright scene after a dark opening. The detected area appears as a box you can adjust before exporting.
Why use ToolsCrow for this
- Automatic detection. Ten frames are sampled across the whole video.
- You stay in control. Adjust the box before exporting.
- Reclaims bitrate. No more pixels spent on black.
- Private. Runs on your device.
Good to know
- Very dark footage can be mistaken for bars, which is why the box is shown for you to check.
- Bars that change during the video, for example a letterboxed section inside a full-frame video, cannot be handled in one pass.
Frequently asked questions
Is my video uploaded to a server?
No. Everything runs inside your browser tab using your own device's video hardware. Your file is never sent to ToolsCrow or anyone else, which also means there is no waiting for an upload and it keeps working if your connection drops after the page has loaded.
Is it really free? Is there a watermark?
It is free with no sign-up, no watermark and no daily limits. The only limits are the ones your device sets: memory and processing power.
How large a video can I use?
Because the video is processed on your device, the limit is your device's memory rather than a server quota. Phone clips of several hundred MB are fine on most devices, and desktop computers usually handle 1 to 2 GB. Files over about 4 GB are not supported.
Which browsers work best?
Current Chrome, Edge and Safari (16.4 or newer, including iPhone and iPad) work best because they include the WebCodecs video engine. Recent Firefox versions work for many files. Older browsers fall back to a much slower real-time mode or may not work at all.
Why does my video have black bars?
Because its shape does not match the frame it was put into: a widescreen film in a 4:3 frame gets bars above and below, and a vertical phone video in a landscape frame gets bars at the sides.
Can I crop the bars manually instead?
Yes, the Video Cropper lets you drag any box, and it has the same automatic detection button.
Related video tools
- Video CropperDrag the crop box, pull a corner, or pick a ratio such as 1:1 for Instagram or 9:16 for TikTok.
- Video Aspect Ratio ConverterTurn a horizontal video into vertical or square, or the other way around.
- Video ResizerScale a video down to 1080p, 720p, 480p or 360p and keep the proportions.
- Video CompressorShrink any video to a fraction of its size while keeping it sharp, or type the exact size you need in MB.
- Video RotatorFix a sideways or upside-down video in a few taps.
- Video InfoDrop in a video and see the answer straight away.
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