Umbrella Creators
Does my video have black bars? Will YouTube show them? Free black bars checker
Open your video here and the checker looks at 40 frames spread across it: rows and columns that stay black in most of them are bars, and frames that are almost entirely black (fades) are skipped. You get the real picture size, its aspect ratio (2.39:1, 4:3, 9:16 inside 16:9...), how big each bar is, whether the bars are in every scene or only some, and the ffmpeg crop to remove them. On YouTube: bars inside your file are part of the picture, so they show on every screen, and YouTube Help asks you not to add them because the player resizes itself to your video's shape. The video never leaves your device.
Check your video for black bars
Your video stays on your device. It plays in this tab and every frame is checked right here.
Choose a video to start. The check begins on its own.
Picture the checker foundBlack bars
Will YouTube show them?
How to remove them
Every frame the checker looked at
Yellow box: the picture. Red: black bars in that frame. Faded: almost black, skipped. Scroll sideways.
How to use the black bars checker
- Choose your video. Your final export is best, since that is what YouTube gets. If the browser cannot play the file (some ProRes, MKV or HEVC files), export a short MP4 (H.264) and open that.
- Wait a few seconds. The checker jumps to 40 moments from 2% to 98% of the video and measures every row and column of each frame. Frames that are almost entirely black, like fades and black title cards, are left out so they do not look like one giant bar.
- Read the verdict. No black bars, black bars in every scene, black bars in some scenes only, or could not check (with the reason). Bars must agree across frames: one dark shot is not enough to call it a bar.
- Look at the frames. The yellow box is the picture the checker found and the red areas are bars. If the bars come from one single shot, it is probably a dark shot and not bars.
- Copy the fix. The ffmpeg crop line uses even numbers, which H.264 MP4 exports need; the Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve settings use the same picture size. Then check the new export with the video upload checker.
What YouTube does with each shape
From YouTube Help, read October 19, 2026. The right column is what I do when I edit.
| Your file | What YouTube does | What I do |
|---|---|---|
| 16:9 with no bars (1920 x 1080, 3840 x 2160) | 16:9 is the standard shape for YouTube on a computer, so it fills the player. | Nothing to change. |
| Bars inside the file (a 2.39:1 or 4:3 picture on a 16:9 frame) | The bars are pixels of your video, so they play on every screen. YouTube Help asks you to avoid adding padding or black bars, because they stop the player from fitting your video to each device. | Export at the picture size (1920 x 804, 1440 x 1080) and let the player adapt. |
| Another shape with no bars (1920 x 804, 1440 x 1080, 1080 x 1080) | The player adapts to the video. On Android the player matches the video's shape: taller for square and vertical videos, shorter for widescreen ones. | Upload as it is. |
| A vertical or square picture inside a 16:9 file | It is a horizontal file, so it is treated as a regular video, with the bars on both sides. | Crop to the picture. At three minutes or less, the cropped file counts as a Short. |
| A square or vertical file up to three minutes | Counts as a Short if uploaded on or after October 15, 2024. YouTube Help suggests a wider shape such as 16:9 if you do not want a Short. | Pick the shape for the shelf you want: vertical for Shorts, 16:9 for long-form. |
When black bars show up in the videos I edit
Most bars I run into come from three places.
- Cinematic crops. A 2.39:1 letterbox preset on a 16:9 timeline for a film look. If it covers the whole video, I export at the picture size instead. If it is only on a few scenes, like a cutscene or an intro, I leave it: it is a choice, and cropping the whole video would cut the scenes around it.
- Phone clips. A vertical clip on a horizontal timeline gets two big side bars. In a long-form video I reframe it or put a blurred copy behind it. If the clip is going to be a Short, I export it vertical from the original clip, not from the 16:9 export with bars.
- Old 4:3 footage in documentaries. Archive clips are often 4:3. In a narrated documentary I usually keep them pillarboxed inside the 16:9 edit, because zooming 133% to fill the frame cuts off the top and bottom and makes old footage softer. The checker reports that as bars in some scenes only, which is expected.
The check I care about most is the accidental one: a full video exported with bars nobody meant to keep, usually from a sequence set to the wrong size. If the checker says bars are in every scene, that is almost always the case. For the export settings themselves, see the export settings calculator.
FAQ
Why does my YouTube video have black bars?
There are two kinds. Bars inside your file were exported with the video: a wide or narrow picture placed on a 16:9 timeline, a vertical phone clip in a horizontal project, or a letterbox preset added for a film look. Bars around your file are drawn by the player when the video and the screen have different shapes. This checker finds the first kind, the one you can fix in the edit.
Does YouTube remove black bars from my video?
YouTube Help does not describe any automatic removal. It asks you to avoid adding padding or black bars to the video, because they get in the way of the player resizing itself to your video and to the viewer's device. Crop them out before you upload; the checker writes the ffmpeg crop with the exact numbers.
What aspect ratio should I upload to YouTube?
The standard on a computer is 16:9, and YouTube Help says the player adapts by itself to other shapes, including vertical and square. Square or vertical videos up to three minutes long, uploaded on or after October 15, 2024, count as Shorts; for a regular video YouTube Help suggests a wider shape such as 16:9.
Will a vertical video with black bars on the sides count as a Short?
Not as it is. A 9:16 picture inside a 16:9 file is a horizontal file, so YouTube treats it as a regular video and shows the bars. Crop it to the 9:16 picture and, if it is three minutes or shorter, it counts as a Short.
How do I remove black bars from a video?
Crop to the picture. With ffmpeg that is the crop filter (crop=width:height:x:y), and the checker writes it for your file. In Premiere Pro, set the sequence frame size to the picture size and keep the clip at 100%. In DaVinci Resolve, set a custom timeline resolution and choose center crop with no resizing for mismatched files. Zooming the clip until the bars are gone also works, but it cuts part of the picture.
Is my video uploaded anywhere?
No. The video plays inside your browser and every frame is checked on your own device. Nothing is sent to a server and nothing is saved.
Sources
- YouTube Help, Video resolution & aspect ratios (computer and Android versions): 16:9 is the standard aspect ratio on a computer; the player adapts to the size of each video; for some shapes, like 9:16 on computer browsers, YouTube adds padding (white, or dark gray in dark theme); avoid adding padding or black bars to the video itself; on Android the player gets taller for square and vertical videos and shorter for widescreen ones. Read October 19, 2026.
- YouTube Help, Understand three-minute YouTube Shorts: videos uploaded on or after October 15, 2024 with a square or vertical aspect ratio, up to three minutes long, are Shorts; use a wider aspect ratio such as 16:9 for long-form. Read October 19, 2026.
- YouTube Help, Recommended upload encoding settings: for vertical or square uploads the player adapts itself to the size of the video. Read October 19, 2026.
- FFmpeg, crop filter: crop=w:h:x:y, where x and y are the top left corner of the area kept.
- How the checker decides: a row or column counts as black when its average brightness is 20 or less on a 0 to 255 scale, its pixels barely vary (standard deviation 3 or less) and no more than 2% of them are brighter than 40. A bar is the band of black rows or columns that the most frames agree on, within 2 pixels, and it must appear in at least 10% of the usable frames (and at least 3). Frames where fewer than 0.2% of pixels are brighter than 40 count as black and are skipped. Bars thinner than 1% of the frame are reported as a thin edge, not as bars. Videos larger than 1920 pixels are measured at 1920 and scaled back.
- Testing: I checked it on ten test videos with known bars (2.39:1 letterbox, 4:3 pillarbox, windowbox, 9:16 inside 16:9, 16:9 inside 9:16, 4K, fades to black, bars in only half the video, dark scenes, a pitch black shot) and compared it with ffmpeg's cropdetect filter on the same files.
Who made this
I'm Kevin Tabares. I've edited long-form YouTube videos since 2015 (1,277 videos and 152.2M+ views tracked on YT Jobs), mostly Roblox and Minecraft gaming, plus narrated documentaries. Stray black bars are one of the things I look for before an export goes out, so I built a check for it that anyone can use. If you want an editor for your channel, get in touch.
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