cutting black edges without re-encoding

[Caoineadh]

I have old family videos imported from analogic source into XviD AVI.
Despite all my efforts, I can't find the old cassettes anymore, so I have only the compressed files. Even if I had them, I wouldn't have the hardware to import it into digital form.
The person that did the job left a HUGE black edge around the video, and that makes the files quite big.
Is it possible to crop without re-encoding? As a matter of fact, the quality is already poor.
Which program should I use?
Thank you for your help.:)

[manono]

Hi-

You can use ffdshow to crop the black on playback, but to cut the black out permanently will require re-encoding.

However, even if it were possible to do without re-encoding, cutting out the black wouldn't make the files a whole lot smaller, as it doesn't take that many bits to encode the black bars, relative to what's required for the rest of the video.

[Caoineadh]

ok so the best thing is to keep them as they are. I'll use ffshow for playback.
Thank you for your help.