Side-by-Side Full Frame in Premier Elements

[RJ Johnston]

I thought being able to do this in Premiere Elements is kind of cool.

Let's say you want to create a double-widescreen video that compares the frames from two videos side-by-side in full scale, or to create a stereoscopic 3D video in the full frames side-by-side format that can be viewed using the "cross-eyed" technique. You would think that you couldn't do this in Premiere Elements because PRE doesn't have a 1440x480 or 1440x540 project preset.

You can accomplish this in Premiere Elements using standard definition DV-AVI video 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x540 (PAL) in a standard definition project and sharing to a video that is 1440x480 (NTSC) or 1440x540 (PAL). Other video formats will work, too.

You need one video on track 1 and the other video on track 2 and parallel to each other.

In the Motion properties, change the x-position of the video on track 1 from 360 to 180 (720/4). You want to change the position, not the "anchor point." Don't change the y-position. You won't see labels "x-position" or "y-position", but that's what I call the pair of numbers in the Position property. "x-position" is the first number in the pair.

For the video on track 2, change the x-position from 360 to 540 (720/4*3). Don't change the y-position.

In the preview window you will see one video overlapping the other.

Now share to an AVI file using the Microsoft Video 1 codec, for example, and change the dimensions in advanced settings to 1440 x 480 (for NTSC) or 1440 x 540 (for PAL). You will need to unlock the aspect ratio so you can enter 480 or 540 after entering 1440. You can select any codec that supports these non-standard dimensions.

When you view the shared file in Windows Media Player, you will see a perfect full frames side-by-side video.

The reason this works is because the "Scale to frame size" option is turned on in Premiere Elements for each video. When you double the pixel width of the shared output video (1440) relative to the project preset (720), the source videos x-positions are also doubled. In the new frame size of 1440, one video takes up the left 720 pixels and the other video takes up the right 720 pixels. They are not overlapped as seen in the Premiere Elements preview window.

This will not work if you share to the Adobe Flash format. What you see in the preview window, overlapping frames, is what you get.

You can do the same with high-definition video in high-definition projects, e.g. 1920x1080 project shared to 3840x1080 video. Of course the x-positions will be different than the standard definition positions. The x-position you need to set in Premiere Elements for the video that will be on the left is 1920/4=480. The x-position for the video that will be on the right is 1920/4*3=1440.

If you want to create 3D from a single 2D video, try this trick using the same 2D video on both tracks. Offset the starting time of one of the videos to the other by 1 to 5 frames, or experiment. Which one you offset on the timeline depends on the motion in the video, and some motion is necessary to create the 3D effect. Smooth panning to the left or to the right gives the best 3D effect. You can try offsetting both ways to see which gives the best effect. One way will be smooth and the other will be jerky. After sharing the video, you can use the cross-eye technique to view excellent 3D video. You can also play the video in some 3D software players and use other techniques for viewing.

Happy editing.

[Dave McElderry]

Well that's really cool. Where do you come up with these ideas RJ?