# Cropping 4:3 Letterbox Widescreen **URL:** \ **Category:** General Discussions\ **Created:** [January 6, 2018, 10:49am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cropping-4-3-letterbox-widescreen/220492 "2018-01-06T10:49:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![reddwarfcrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/91b2a8/32.png) [@reddwarfcrew](https://forums.plex.tv/u/reddwarfcrew)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 10:49am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cropping-4-3-letterbox-widescreen/220492/1 "2018-01-06T10:49:21Z")
Hi, couple of questions… I know within my collection i have a mixture of true widescreen (16:9 / 2.35:1) and letterboxed widescreen in 4:3 format. 1 - Is there an easy way to re-encode the letterboxed 4:3 to crop the left and right black bars and zoom the actual film (so I don’t have to use the zoom function on the TV)? (I have both windows and mac) 2 - Is there a way to identify these using plex2csv? What attribute am I looking for in the metadata? Thanks all. ---
**Author:** ![FordGuy61](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/22d042/32.png) [@FordGuy61](https://forums.plex.tv/u/FordGuy61)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 4:45am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cropping-4-3-letterbox-widescreen/220492/2 "2018-01-08T04:45:34Z")
[Handbrake](https://handbrake.fr "Handbrake") does a good job of cropping black bars. I’m not sure exactly how it does so. Their [docs](https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/1.0.0/advanced/resizing-video.html "docs") use the term “best guess.” Not sure what to look for in metadata. When I look at DVD rips with [MediaInfo](https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo "MediaInfo"), I don’t see anything unique between a true 4:3 video (like an old TV show) and a letterboxed widescreen movie. Both have a Display Aspect Ratio of 4:3. A true widescreen video is easy to spot, as it will have a DAR of 16:9. If you know you don’t have any true 4:3 content, then the DAR is an easy way to tell the difference between a real & letterboxed widescreen movie. [MKVToolNix](https://mkvtoolnix.download/ "MKVToolNix") lets you set the aspect ratio. You can take a letterboxed video and force the DAR to 2.35:1, 2.5:1, etc (i.e. what it would be were it not letterboxed). It helps if you know the original aspect ratio of the video (usually printed on DVD jacket). If not, it is easy to try several settings until you find the right one. Only caveat is that you might lose some info such as foreign language subtitles (anything that would normally appear in the black bars below the video). MKVToolNix works with MKV files. It will take a MP4 as input, but output will be MKV. To change the aspect ratio, load the file into MKVToolNix Multiplexer section. Select / highlight the video track. Look for Video Properties on the right side of screen. The pulldown has some pre-set choices (2.35, 2.4, etc) but you can type in whatever you want. Set things up the way you want then click “start multiplexing” to create the new MKV file with the new properties. There’s probably a way to adjust the aspect ratio with the Header Editor section, but I haven’t dug that far into the manual. You can always remux back to a MP4 container if needed. I use [Subler](https://subler.org/ "Subler") on my MacBook. I’m sure there’s a similar tool for Windows, Linux, etc. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2020, 12:24am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/cropping-4-3-letterbox-widescreen/220492/3 "2020-01-08T00:24:34Z")