Ok, so you need to resize a large video into a smaller resolution or take a smaller video and enlarge it? There are currently no default tools built into Windows that you can use to resize videos. You can use Windows Movie Maker to edit videos and add transitions, etc, but not to change the actual video resolution.
If you do a search for RESIZE VIDEOS in Google, you’ll get a list of a bunch of commercial applications that you would have to shell out cash for! So if you’re lucky enough to have run across this post, I’ll show you a free way to resize videos quickly and easily.
VirtualDub is a free video capture software and video processing software. It has many of the video editing features that you would find in Adobe Premiere, but it is streamlined for performing operations on video very fast. It also has batch-processing capabilities for processing large number of video files.
You can do a TON of stuff with VirtualDub, including add special effects to your videos such as blurs, black and white, flipping, and lots more. However, we’ll only going to go over how you can use it to resize your videos (from YouTube or wherever!).
First download VirtualDub and extract it to a folder on your hard drive. VirtualDub does not require any installation, it simply runs directly via an EXE! That means it doesn’t mess around with your registry or anything else in Windows.
Once installed, launch the program by clicking on the VirtualDub icon. You’ll get a blank screen with some controls across the bottom. Now I’m assuming you already have your video that you would like to resize, so to get going, click on File and choose Open Video file.
Browse to the location of your video and open it. You’ll now see your video appear twice in the main window. This is because the left one is considered your original and the right one is your “processed” or altered version. When you apply a filter to your video, the right one updates and you can watch both at the same time! Cool!
Right now they are both the same since nothing has been done. Ok, so now that the video is imported, go to Video and click on Filters.
Click on the Add button at the right and scroll down till you see resize.
Click Ok and you’ll now be brought to the resize filter options. Do not be intimidated by this screen if you’ve never heard of most of things listed, I don’t either! What you’re interested in is the top section where you choose a new size. You can either choose an absolute size and type that in manually if you like, or you can specify a size relative to the current size.
Go ahead and choose how you want to resize your video. If you know you want it to be 640×480, then click on Absolute and type that in yourself, otherwise choose Relative. I’m making mine 50% smaller. There are a bunch of other options listed, such as adding a frame, or changing the aspect ratio of the video, but you can just leave that all the same if you just want to resize. Click Ok and then Ok again.
You should now see your original video on the left and your processed video on the right, in my case, half the size!
Now to save your newly resized video, click on File and choose Save As AVI. And that’s it! Go ahead and play your video and you should have it in the smaller or larger resolution! Easy as that! Have a question, post a comment! Enjoy!