[FFmpeg-user] Video scaling, padding and cropping together question

[Frank Tetzel]

> The thing I am trying to achieve is a compromise between these two 
> extremes, eg. a method which gives less cropping at the LH & RH
> picture edges for the price of a little padding above and below the
> picture.  I'm presuming this (ideally) involves scaling, padding and
> cropping together in a single filter.

Just pick a bigger width for the scale and pad filter, and then add
crop as the last filter, cropping to the final resolution. Add crop
with another comma to the filter chain as you did with scale and pad.

Also, have a look at the filter documentation:
http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html