Resizing/cropping video

spazo · Post by **spazo** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 4:05 am

Ok, newby alert. I've tried searching for an answer but can't find one so here's a new topic...

I've got a video that is 852x480 and about 2.5 minutes long. I want to cut out portions of it and crop it significantly. The final run time is about 16 seconds but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to crop the video without having the background color show through.

I've used the crop tool in MSP8 but the rest of the screen is black (or whatever the background color is) instead of being completely cropped out. The cropping also has to move as the video progresses so an arbitrary "center crop throughout" won't work.

I want the final video to be 852x135.

Thanks!

jday · Post by **jday** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 5:23 am

I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that it is fairly easy to do what you want to do. Just add a moving path to the video. Using the starting keyframe, position and resize the video to fill the screen (make sure "keep aspect ratio" is checked). Then right click on the key frame and copy the new parameters. Then right click on the end keyframe and paste the new parameters.

The bad news is that by stretching the video larger than it's original size (which is what you are doing) you are going to lose some clarity/sharpness. The amount of loss is directly in proportion to how much you cropped and have to blow up the remainder of the video.

spazo · Post by **spazo** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 7:28 am

Ok, I guess I'm slightly confused or maybe I just explained it incorrectly. Why do I need to expand the video? The width is already the target width. I just need to bring up the bottom and top edges.

If I was doing this in Adobe Photoshop, I'd just resize the canvas and use individual frames to create the animation, then shift the image behind the canvas, exposing what I what showing... nothing that "easy" with MSP8?

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 10:03 am

Please view:
MediaStudio/VideoStudio: Use A Video Sequence File

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 1:42 pm

spazo wrote:Ok, I guess I'm slightly confused or maybe I just explained it incorrectly. Why do I need to expand the video? The width is already the target width. I just need to bring up the bottom and top edges.

If I was doing this in Adobe Photoshop, I'd just resize the canvas and use individual frames to create the animation, then shift the image behind the canvas, exposing what I what showing... nothing that "easy" with MSP8?

The difference is that you cannot resize the canvas in video: it is determined by your project settings. If you wish to do something similar, you can create a new video file with different settings (within the limit of what your codec will allow).

Please excuse my curiosity, why do you need such a massive H/V resolution asymmetry?

jday · Post by **jday** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 1:55 pm

spazo, sorry I missed the last sentence of your original post about the size you wanted the finished video. However, that doesn't change the fact (like Devil stated) that you cannot change the "canvas size" of the video.

Maybe if you explain what you are going to use this video (at the size you want it) for it will help us help you. For example, if you are going to play it on a TV, which is either 4:3 or 16:9 then you would obviously still have to have "black bars" on top and bottom. If you want to use it to overlay over another video, then you can do use by setting the overlay options.

spazo · Post by **spazo** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 7:19 pm

That looks interesting Steve. I'll take a stab at that one.

I'm coverting a video into a usable size for use as a background for a banner on a website... thus the strange size.