Remove Black Bars from Video without Degrading Quality

Liza Brown

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Want to remove the black bars that disturb you when you watching a movie on your PC or TV? These distracting black bars may appear on both sides, or along the top and bottom of the video. It indicates that the aspect ratio of the video is not suitable for your viewing screen. In this article, I will show you the specific steps to remove black bars from a video. You are going to learn: you are going to learn:

• Part1: Why Annoying Black Bars Appear
• Part2: How to Remove Black Bar from Video with Filmora Easily

Now just remove them easily and without any quality loss using Wondershare Filmora. You can get a free trial below.

Note: This black bar remover is available on both Windows and Mac platforms. The below guide takes Windows screenshots to explain how it works. If you're a Mac user, just adopt Mac Video Editor to achieve the same.

You may also like: How to Add Black Bars to Video

Part 1: Why Annoying Black Bars Appear

Many people are wondering why we will see black bars on the video sometimes. In fact, it is all about aspect ratios. In the old days, the 4:3 aspect ratio is a standard format, but with the development of technology, 16:9 format appears. So when you play 4:3 format video in a 16:9 play window, naturally, black bars will appear. After we know why it appears, it will be easy to remove black bars from the video. Keep reading!

Part 2: How to Remove Black Bar from Video with Filmora Easily

In Filmora, you can remove the black bar by cropping the video to fit. If you choose the Crop to Fit option in Filmora, every time you drag and drop the clip from the Media Library to the timeline, you will find the clip will be cropped automatically, and there is no black bar.

While the automatic Crop to Fit option doesn’t work for each clip, you can still crop manually frame by frame based on your needs. Here is how to remove the black bar with Crop and Zoom in Filmora.

Step 1: Import your media files

Click “Import” to load media files from your hard drive or digital cameras. Almost all SD and HD formats are supported, including WMV, MOV, AVCHD(MTS, M2TS), DV, MPG, MP4, and more. When you add all of them, they will show in the Media Library as thumbnails. Drag and drop them into the Video Timeline, and then click the play icon to watch them on the right previewing window.

Step 2: Remove black bars

Right-click the video that has a black bar on the top and bottom or both sides, select "Crop and Zoom" to access the crop window. Here, you can manually set the frame size, or tick off the "16:9" (widescreen) or "4: 3" (standard) option to eliminate the black bars. Since it posts a real-time previewing window, you can judge the right aspect ratio for your PC or TV screen with ease.

Tips: You may also be interested in adjusting the brightness, contrast, playing speed, audio volume to get better image and performance. If needed, please access the Edit window by double-clicking the file to achieve more.

Step 3: Save the video without black bars

Click "Export" to start removing black bars. In the pop-up output window, save your creation as the original video format or choose from a variety of format options for convenient playback.

Also, you can choose a specific device preset for full-screen enjoyment on the go. And even burning it to DVD video for playback on a standalone DVD player or widescreen HDTV. (Tips: You can further set the advanced settings to high definition video like 1080p, or 720p as per your need.)

Bonus tips

1. Wondershare Filmora can only export one file at a time. So if you want to remove black bars from multiple files without merging them together, you can save the project file onto your computer one by one. The default file extension is .wfp. After that, load them once again to create files without black bars one after another.

2. Sometimes people love to create special black bars to create a cinematic look for their video, instead of removing black bars. If you want the same cinematic effect, you can go to the Ultimate Guide for Cinematic Black Bars and get more creative ideas!

Liza Brown

Liza Brown is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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