How to get rid of black bars that are baked into your footage
Ask Vizard Agent to find the active picture area before it reframes anything. A file's dimensions describe the container, not the image, so it detects where the real picture sits inside the frame, reads a full-resolution frame to confirm the edges, and crops to that first. Otherwise the reframe treats the bars as part of the shot.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Ask for detection rather than cropping. If you name a crop yourself you're guessing at the edges, and being eight pixels out leaves a thin dark line along one side that shows up on every platform. Say your target format too, and whether you suspect the bars are only in some of the clips.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
The pattern is the same every time: measure the frame, look at it, crop to the real picture, and only then do the job you asked for. Vizard Agent checks the picture rather than the metadata, because a file's stated dimensions say almost nothing about where the image actually sits. In the sessions behind this article it:
- Probed each source for its stated dimensions, then detected the active video area inside the frame.
- Read a raw frame at full resolution to check the edges, since detection finds an edge but looking catches a "bar" that is really a dark part of the shot.
- Checked the first second separately, because some sources are only letterboxed at the start, by a title card or a fade from black.
- Measured the exact bar widths and noticed when the bars weren't pure black, measuring the edge rather than testing for a colour.
- Cropped each clip to its real picture, reframed from the cropped version and checked the output had no dark edge left.
When does this not work well?
Cropping to the picture changes the clip's aspect ratio, which isn't always what you want, and it can't recover anything: the bars replaced the image when the file was made. Mixed ratios in one edit end up differing more, a deliberate letterbox is a style rather than a fault, and very low-resolution sources lose pixels they need.
Common questions
Why does the file say 1080p? Because that's the container. Vizard Agent looks at the picture inside it.
What if the bars are grey? Vizard Agent measures the edge rather than testing for black.
Can I keep the letterbox? Yes. Say so and Vizard Agent treats it as intended.