Ok, crop and pad added.
Not sure about decimate as it adjusts the output framerate.
On a clip with 25 fps "decimate=cycle=3" would generate a 16.66666 fps file. Wouldn't it make sense to put such file on the timeline and then let the NLE convert it to the desired framerate?
If there is a consistent frame pacing in the source, then yes, letting the timeline do it (or the connector) is absolutely fine.
However, if for example if you have a 24fps source that somehow got encoded as 30fps, then what you have is a 1, 1, 1, 2 pattern, meaning the fourth frame is duplicated. It would be very difficult to ensure the frame rate down conversion would exactly remove the duplicated frame, rather than one of the unique frames. When editing gets involved, it's even harder to guarantee that. If the wrong frame gets dropped, you get severe frame judder as a result.
It's too bad the filter doesn't seem to support removing more than one frame per cycle, as removing two frames from a cycle of 5 would be particularly useful in extracting a 24fps video from a 60p source as well at the correct pacing. However this could probably be accomplished by setting frame rate in sequence/connector to 30fps and then using Decimate with a cycle of 5.
My issue is specifically with video game footage. 30fps inside a 60fps container. Ideally, just dropping every other frame SHOULD be good enough, but with video games sometimes a frame is rendered early or late, so if you use decimate you're more likely to be able to detect which of the two frames in the cycle is a duplicate, to better improve the downconversion.