How to Crop Videos Using Avidemux

If you need to crop a video because you only need a small area of it, you can achieve this using the free program Avidemux.

In order to get started, you will need to first open the video file in Avidemux. As cropping the video cannot use the same frame data, you will need to re-encode the video. To do this, use the drop-down box under 'Video Output' to select the format you want the encoded video to be in. You can select anything except 'Copy'. 'Mpeg4 AVC (x264)' is the recommended setting, as it is a very common codec. To crop the video, click on the 'Filters' button below that, and click on 'Crop' under 'Available Filters' on the window that pops up.

After double-clicking on 'Crop', a new window will pop up displaying the video. You can adjust the crop using the four number fields in the top left-hand corner of the window, and you can adjust these values finely using the up and down arrows. You can also click and drag the red rubber band in order to set the crop[ that way, and you can use the 'Hide Rubber Band' checkbox to hide the red lines, so you can see exactly what your crop will look like. The 'Auto Crop' button in the top right-hand corner can also be used if you want to remove black bars from your video, it works best if there is a good contrast between the video and the black bars, so you can use the timeline to scrub through the video to find a good frame. Now just click 'Ok' to set your crop. Now just save the video, and it it will encode a cropped version and export it where you want. You can also combine this with other filters as well as only export a segment of it by 

How to Change the Colour In Batch Files and Command Prompt

If you have ever made batch files or used command prompt on windows, you have probably noticed that the default command prompt window is white text on a black background. If you have ever wondered if there is a way to change these colours, well yes their is thanks to the 'color' command.

To use it, simply type 'color', followed by the two digit colour code representing your background and foreground (text) colours. These digits are the hexadecimal values representing the 16 available colours to choose from, as listed below. A valid example would be to type 'color 25', to set the background to green and the text to purple.

Colour	Code	Colour	Code
Black	0	Grey	8
Blue	1	Light Blue	9
Green	2	Light Green	A
Aqua	3	Light Aqua	B
Red	4	Light Red	C
Purple	5	Light Purple	D
Yellow	6	Light Yellow	E
White	7	Bright White	F

You can get this list in command prompt by using the 'color' command followed by an invalid colour code. Something to note is that if you just want to change the text colour, you an simply use the one digit colour code for that colour, such as using 'color 2' to set the text colour to green.

Make a Simple Text to Speech Windows Programs

Have you ever wanted to make your own text to speech program? Well you can use the following code to make a visual basics script program to turn your typing into speech using Microsoft SAPI.

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Dim Message, Speak Message=InputBox("Enter your text","Text to Speech") Set Speak=CreateObject("sapi.spvoice") Speak.Speak Message

Just open notepad and copy this text. Save with whatever name you want, as long as it ends with the .vbs file extension. Then just double-click on the icon to open the program. The program gives you a text box where you can type what you want it to say.