Beginner question: Crop window format

[Fule Sandor]

Hello,

I would like to crop an exactly 16:9 window from a 3:2 clip. Can I choose predefined crop formats, or is it always freeform? Or can I display actual crop vindow dimensions?

[tletter]

I would like to crop an exactly 16:9 window from a 3:2 clip. Can I choose predefined crop formats, or is it always freeform? Or can I display actual crop vindow dimensions?

What version of VS do you have?

Your profile just contains the following bogus information:

Corel programs: x1111
motherboard: x11111111
processor: x1111111
ram: 1111
Video Card: x1111
sound_card: x1111
Hard_Drive_Capacity: x1111
Monitor/Display Make & Model: x11111

tletter
https://www.youtube.com/user/tletter

[Davidk]

Thumbs up to tletter; no information is better than bad info.
Several ways you could do this;
- use the aspect ratio items in preferences and set one that has no letterbox
- use the cropping filter
The filter list (Fx in the library tool bar) includes a cropping filter. drag it onto the clip, select customise filter in the options panel, untick the fill colour box and use the eyedropper together with the width and height % boxes to centre and crop the part of the image you want to retain. Use keyframes in the timestrip to vary or maintain the degree of cropping you want through the whole clip.

[tanguero]

Three steps (+ an optional one):
1. Make sure your Settings > Project Properties has a 16:9 profile selected.
2. Select the video clip in question (your 3:2 one) on the timeline. Expand the Options^ tab > Video.
3. Under Resampling option, select "Keep aspect ratio (no letterbox)" for the 3:2 video to be expanded to 16:9 (it will be centered and you will lose a small amount from the top and bottom).
4a. If you want the deleted horizontal strips NOT to be symmetrically top and bottom, select Pan & Zoom under this setting and you have a ton of flexibility, including varying the position over time (this is a whole mini-tutorial including explaining keyframes as they are used in VS). But, as a simple case, if you set the Zoom ratio to 119% at both the beginning and end, and click "No Panning" you can change the crop position to a fixed part of the clip for the duration of the clip.
4b. Alternatively, if you don't want to lose any part of your original video, you of course have the choice between letter-boxing (choose "Keep Aspect Ratio" in Step 3) or distorting the video to fill the new dimensions (choose "Fit to project size" in Step 3).