Cropping utilities?

[mike18xx]

The dream: I'm watching an .AVI and decide that the video's margins are too chewed for my tastes, so I open up a utility or plug-in or some-such, open the video in it, drag-draw a rectangle around the 95% I want to keep, click a button or three, and the program hacks off the unwanted material, then permits me to save as a direct-stream-copy (or as close to that as possible in terms of losslessness and speed). What offers this? (Given the great number of animated avatars which consist of tiny inset clips from TV shows, I assume there is a variety of products.)

[anonymez]

open the video in it, drag-draw a rectangle around the 95% I want to keep, click a button or three, and the program hacks off the unwanted material, then permits me to save as a direct-stream-copy

Not possible; the cropping will either have to be applied during playback (as a filter in ffdshow or a zoom function in your software player, for example) or re-encoded.

Another way that works (on avi files anyway), but not really recommended is editing a few values with a hex editor.

[mike18xx]

Assuming I converted or unwound the AVI back into mpeg (or some other editable format), what would you then recommend for cropping?

[anonymez]

AutoGK or Virtualdub.

But it will be far less time consuming (not to mention "lossless" WRT picture quality), to do it with ffdshow on playback.

[mike18xx]

Re AGK/Vdub: Encoding isn't the problem (I do a lot of that); it's the cropping which I need done prior to it.

(I can perform a lossless mpeg unspooling of an AVI with TotalVideoConverter, then crop with ????, then AutoGK or Nero Recode it back up.)

[anonymez]

Encoding isn't the problem (I do a lot of that); it's the cropping which I need done prior to it.

You can crop with AutoGK, during encoding.

(I can perform a lossless mpeg unspooling of an AVI with TotalVideoConverter

Not sure what you mean by "unspooling", but the result won't be lossless if you are using a lossy encoder.

[mike18xx]

I need specific cropping, like none off the left, a full inch off the right, a bit off the top and a quarter inch off the bottom.

[anonymez]

And AutoGK allows you to do it. I haven't got it installed, but IIRC it was in something like "Advanced Options".

[paglamon]

And AutoGK allows you to do it. I haven't got it installed, but IIRC it was in something like "Advanced Options".

[mike18xx]

WTF?

(Much rummaging around...digging up FAQ...word-scanning for "crop"...)

Actually ya gotta push Ctrl-F9 for that screen to show up.

Well, thanks. This, if it works, should satisfy my needs.