@mattly VLC is an absolute mess, yeah.
Handbrake is super awesome if it does what you need, I'd definitely start there.
If you need more control... honestly I've done stuff in iMovie when desperate (it's very format-picky and weird but it's pretty capable).
Or I tend to resort to ffmpeg by hand when all else fails or I want to keep specific metadata :blobfoxdead: . Resize and crop would be easy enough, assuming it's the same across the whole video.