Why This Video Appears in Full Canvas? Rookie video editor here, asking about video canvas. Don't know the right term in video editing but in image editing it's area that is not part of it.

This is the video: 
                
            
As you see, ratio is good and available definitions are up to 480p.

After downloading it (and I tried different definitions) this is what I get when playing in VLC and Windows Media Player:



Do you have any idea how something what was previously invisible got picked up? And why I don't see this canvas/artifact on YouTube? No idea what that is but feels like amateur's first attempt at YouTube publishing. Maybe YouTube filters it out but only when viewed there.

How can I crop the picture out of this mess and would I need special software?

Another question is about available definitions. While YouTube displays them up to 480p, how is it definitions up to 1080p are available through KeepVid?



Thanks!
It's weird. I see all resolutions - upto 1080p - on Youtube. And the thumbnail hover does show the full frame as seen in your VLC snapshot, but not in the playback window on Youtube.

youtube-dl shows streams in a 1:2 ratio i.e. 540x1080, 360x720, which would be what you're seeing locally.

You can use ffmpeg, a free command-line tool, to crop out the remainder.

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vf "crop=iw:iw*9/16,scale=0:-2" -crf 20 -c:a copy new.mp4