vlc-media-playeryoutube
I have black bars on my video at the top and bottom. I changed the aspect ratio to 4:3 and crop ratio to 16:9 and it works when I watch it on my PC.
But when I uploaded the video to YouTube it stays the same, why?
Should I convert the video? But when I do that the audio goes away from the file.
This is the solution that worked best for me: there was a video stream I had to play in VLC because RTMP is/was poorly supported in my preferred media player, MPCHC (which has this feature builtin to the numpad keys). This stream had both vertical and horizontal letterboxes and when I needed to zoom it, I realized the thing.
Just use the crop function: if you leave default aspect ratio options the video will scale to fit the window, thus giving the zooming effect!
To access cropping you need to first open the Tools menu, then click Effects and Filters or just use the default CTRL+E shortcut.
Then you need to select the Video Effects tab, and navigate to the Crop sub-tab: play with the cropping values to achieve the desired zoom level.
Final Remarks: You can fine-tune it during play and you have pixel-level control. Enjoy!
AFAIK you can't save aspect ratios.
Using VLC, the only solution I can think of is to transcode the video into the right aspect ratio.
Best Answer
Yes, VLC can create a permanently cropped video.
The tutorial "How to crop video using VLC media player" on steemit discusses the method.
It's not simple though. You need to set cropadd filter preferences, which you'll have to manually calculate, and then use VLC's Convert/Save menu item to record a new version of the video with those cropped settings.
I did this once. It wasn't entirely intuitive (especially trying to figure out what values needed to be set under cropadd), but it worked well.
Depending on your patience, however, it might be simpler to locate a different program that is more simply used for this purpose.