Removing black bars from photos

[theavy]

I'm using VideoStudio Ultimate X9 with Windows 10

My wife seems to have a habit of taking a lot of portrait style photos so that when I include them in a video, I want to remove the black bars from them by creating a bit of a colorful background. This was working fine when she was using a point & shoot camera, but since she switched to a Canon EOS Rebel T3i, it's suddenly become more difficult. I had been copying the photos onto overlay tracks 1 & 2 and then using the Background Generator to create a background to fill the black bar areas behind the photo (displayed on overlay track 2).

Now though, I'm seeing that the black bars (on the Canon EOS T3i photos) are showing as part of the photos when I copy them onto the overlay tracks, which is not only quite odd, but is making it impossible to use the background generator with any success. I can't see these black bars in the photos when I view them in Paint Shop Pro or Aftershot Pro (or any other viewer for that matter). I only see them when they're on the overlay tracks. Is there a setting to control whether they're shown or is this maybe a bug?

Thanks!
Tom

[BrianCee]

If the black bars are indeed part of the photo then you have a number of options

with the photos in the overlay track invoke Chroma key - choosing black as the key colour - that should remove them

put the photos in the overlay track and apply the 'cropping' FX to them and customise it to remove the black bars

crop the black bars of in an external photo/image manipulating programme before adding them to Videostudio

Incidentally you can put anything at all in the top track as a background - doesn't specifically have to be a "background"

[theavy]

BrianCee,

Thank you for the tips! I tried the Chroma key approach, and that appears to have done the trick. I'm back in business!

Thank you again!
Tom