How to Crop a Video Using FFmpeg: A Quick Guide and Parameter Breakdown

Have you ever needed to remove annoying black bars from a video, or wanted to keep only a specific area of the frame? You don't need to open a heavy video editor for that. FFmpeg provides a powerful and precise command-line solution. This guide will show you how to crop your videos with ease.

🚀 Quick Path: The FFmpeg Command

To crop a video, for example, to cut a 640x480 section from input.mp4 starting at the coordinates (100, 50), use the following command:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "crop=640:480:100:50" output.mp4

🧠 The Breakdown: What Each Parameter Means

This command might look complex, but each part has a clear purpose. Let's break it down in a table:

Parameter	Explanation	Example
ffmpeg	The command to start the FFmpeg program.	ffmpeg
-i input.mp4	-i is short for "input," followed by your source video file.	-i my_video.mov
-vf	Short for "video filter," this tells FFmpeg you're about to apply a filter to the video stream.	-vf
"crop=w:h:x:y"	This is the core cropping filter, with its parameters separated by colons.	"crop=640:480:100:50"
↳ w	width of the output rectangle.	640
↳ h	height of the output rectangle.	480
↳ x	The X coordinate for the top-left corner of the output rectangle, starting from the top-left (0,0).	100 (100 pixels from the left)
↳ y	The Y coordinate for the top-left corner of the output rectangle.	50 (50 pixels from the top)
output.mp4	The filename for your new, cropped video.	cropped_video.mp4

FAQ & Variations

Q: How can I crop the video from the center?

A: Absolutely! You don't need to calculate the x and y coordinates manually. The crop filter in FFmpeg allows you to use variables like iw (input width) and ih (input height) for dynamic calculations.

To crop a 300x300 area from the exact center of the video, use this command:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "crop=300:300:(iw-300)/2:(ih-300)/2" output.mp4

Here, (iw-300)/2 calculates the x coordinate for centering, and (ih-300)/2 calculates the y coordinate.