A new “folder”-like expansion in the Resources window under Video Effects, called “Favorites”, lists a few of the more frequently used Video Effects. This makes them easy to find quickly. You can create a personalized version of the expanders.txt file in your home directory to customize this for your own usage. Instructions of how to do this are in the Manual here.
This month’s AppImages include a new render format, h264_metadata.mp4, that provides a good example of how to use piping of codec data through the bitstream filter to crop both left and right by 20. You can use this as a guideline to create your own specific bitstream piping formats.