Add black bars to video
Letterbox or pillarbox a video into 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, or 4:5 without cutting anything off. It’s free, with no watermark.
Drop a video to add black bars
Choose 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, or 4:5. The whole picture is kept, centered on black.
MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, MPEG-TS, and 3GP videos.
How to add black bars to a video
Choose the shape the video has to fit and the whole picture is centered on black: bars on the sides for a vertical video in 16:9, above and below for a landscape one in 9:16. Nothing is cropped or stretched, and the video never leaves your device.
Step 1
Choose a videoPick the video that needs bars.Step 2
Choose the shapePick 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, or 4:5.Step 3
Download the videoExport it with the whole picture on black.
What to expect
- Supported inputs
- MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, MPEG-TS (.ts, .mts), and 3GP videos. AVI, WMV, and FLV files can’t be opened yet.
- What happens
- The video is re-encoded in its source format with black bars filling the new shape. The frame keeps the source’s short side, so a 1080 × 1920 phone video becomes 1920 × 1080 in 16:9.
- Limits
- A video track is required, and subtitle tracks are left out. Frames are kept within 3840 × 2160, which browser encoders handle.
Your files stay on your device
Your computer does the work, so the file never has to be uploaded, and that’s also why it’s free: there’s no server time for us to pay for. You don’t need an account, and nothing you make gets a watermark.
“Thank you I used this for my university final project.”
Questions
Bars keep the whole picture, so nothing at the edges is lost. Cropping fills the screen but cuts part of the frame away.
Yes. Change aspect ratio fills them with a blurred copy of the video, the look most phone apps use.