Best software to resize & crop avi/mpeg movies for avatar/sig use?

[kurtky]

How do I resize avi/mpeg files to make them smaller
Ex. For use as avatars & sigs (which ill be converted to gif of course)
And I want to remove the black lines on some of the avis I want to resize too.
Coz They were ripped from dvds

Free software is better of course
If you know a software taht you use and is easy
Pls point me the right place and aguide too if possible
Thanks

[Baldrick]

Virtualdubmod or virtualdubmpeg2, select video->filter and add the resize filter and then video->filters and click on cropping and last file->save avi. Use super and convert to a gif animated video.

[kurtky]

thanks

[kurtky]

Anyway,
Its good but is there any software to do manual croping?
Insteadof using variables as offsets?
I meanusing your mouse to crop?
I find that easier. Thanks

[kurtky]

Question
I tried resizing to 90 x 90 pixels to use the vid as my avatar
But what happens is when I use that width and height the video is duplicated or what you would call somewhat cropped
When I use 150 pixels and above its fine