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Crop to certain size?

Specific to Premiere Elements version 2022

Crop to certain size?

Postby foxs » Thu Dec 02, 2021 10:45 pm

Hello, I am brand new to Premiere Elements, just got my 2022 less than a week ago, along with Steve's book 2021 (I did not know the 2022 is out, that was the only one I found at Amazon at that time). Anyway, I have a question about cropping. I watched Steve's tutorial on creating 'Brady Bunch' video (Row, Row, Row your boat). My question is: the source clips are from different people, different sizes; simple resize using percentage will not work. I manually cropped top/bottom/left/right, but I am not too happy with the result. I was wondering if there is a way to make the clips all appear the same size? Thanks in advance.
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Re: Crop to certain size?

Postby John 'twosheds' McDonald » Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:51 am

If I understand correctly you have standard video clips with differing pixel (aspect ratio) dimensions (e.g. 1280 x 720; 1920 x 1080; 2560 x 1440, etc.) or something completely different for those folk that insist on holding their phone cameras vertically to record video.

There are a number of websites that offer on-line facilities but I cannot vouch for any of them as I haven't used any of those services.

The only suggestion that I can make is to use Handbrake to resize the videos to a common pixel dimension - a lot of us here use that software to convert video formats among other uses.

https://handbrake.fr/

Be aware, though, that whilst higher definition videos can be reduced in size without significant loss of quality, no software can create new pixels when increasing the pixel dimensions.

If you have a need to increase pixel dimensions from say, SD (720 x 576) to HD (1920 x 1080), then Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI might be worth a look - you can download a trial but it is likely to have some restrictions.

https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance ... rand-Video
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Re: Crop to certain size?

Postby Steve Grisetti » Fri Dec 03, 2021 7:31 am

Hi, foxs. It sounds like you applied the Crop effect to reshape some of your videos.

If so, you say you were "not happy with the result." Why not? That is exactly what you would do to change the shapes of your video clips.
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Re: Crop to certain size?

Postby foxs » Fri Dec 03, 2021 9:34 pm

Thanks for the tip, John and Steve. To answer Steve: because no matter what, it still boils down to 'eyeball', unlike resizing still image, where you have the choice of real size (inch or mm), or number of pixels (horizontal/vertical). With multiple 'singers', it's hard to eyeball all clips so that they will be exactly the same size on the screen.
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Re: Crop to certain size?

Postby foxs » Fri Dec 03, 2021 10:04 pm

Here's an example I found way back when:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRHi8YAdgSY

The guy was using WeVideo. I thought Adobe Premiere Elements would have similar feature.
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Re: Crop to certain size?

Postby Steve Grisetti » Fri Dec 03, 2021 10:09 pm

I don't know if this will help, but this is how I do it.

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Re: Crop to certain size?

Postby foxs » Sat Jan 01, 2022 8:07 pm

Thanks Steve, sorry I have not been here for a long time. Actually, that was exactly the video (parts 1 and 2) which led me to purchase your book. Unfortunately, it won't work for me because we are dealing with a bunch of amateurs (myself included ... :-D ) The video clips that I received, most were landscape, one was portrait (obviously they all created the video using cellphones), some were closer to the camera, some were farther away, hence a simple '55% scale' will not give me a good result. What I am looking for is something that will give me the exact size of the image, either in pixels or inch; for example, Windows' Paint: Image, Resize, or PowerPoint: Format Picture. But I get your point: such thing does not exist in Premiere Elements. :(

Also, I learned that we cannot rearrange the 'layers' (the order of the video track), for example, in PowerPoint, you have the ability to 'bring to front' or 'send to back'. I had a late submission, which when inserted, naturally it will be on the last track, as a result, my text (caption) was covered. Oh I know that we could select the entire track, cut and paste it into different track, but I wish there was a simple way of selecting the track and simply drag it up or down.
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Re: Crop to certain size?

Postby Steve Grisetti » Sun Jan 02, 2022 8:45 am

There's no automatic way to do this, Foxs. So you'll have to figure out how to resize each of your video sources to fit your needs and set those sizes manually. I don't know any wat around that.

As for Move to Front and Send to Back, there's no equivalent in video editing. In video, you are working with tracks rather than layers. Your higher tracks will appear above the lower tracks. So, again, you'll need to plan and place your video clips manually to get the look you're trying to achieve.

All of which would be much easier if all of your video clips were the same size, shape and resolution. But if you have no choice in that matter, you'll have to compensate manually.
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Re: Crop to certain size?

Postby sidd finch » Sun Jan 02, 2022 11:59 am

Not sure if this will help but maybe you can extrapolate to use with premiere elements. In Premiere Pro when you click on the clip you can look at the effect control panel -> Video effects -> Motion -> Position. You will see a numerical value for the position. There is also scale function that indicates the percentage of size. Default is 100%

By changing the scale of the clip to 50% you can then move to the position you want (eyeball) take note of the corresponding position numbers (horizontal number and vertical number) then use mathematics to calculate the the positions that you want the other clips to be and just change the scale to the size you want and type in the new position numbers. This allows the videos to be lined up on the same vertical or horizontal position. From there you can use something like feather to make the edges soft for example.

Hope this helps.

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Re: Crop to certain size?

Postby foxs » Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:14 pm

Thanks, Steve, Sidd. Appreciate your effort to educate me. :) Just so you know, I've doing some googling, it looks like Premiere Elements do not have what I am looking for, however, there are other video editor software out there that can do it. In other words, if I want it, then I will have to upgrade. :( Too bad ... I am getting used to the Elements' user interface already. :-D If you are curious, I am looking at Final Cut Pro.
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