How to take a section of a video clip and expand it to fill the screen

ray-young wrote on 4/30/2018, 9:27 PM

I'm relatively new to Movie Edit Pro and learning as I go. I want to take a section of a video clip where the person I'm videoing is too far away and take a smaller portion of that clip (close-up, not duration) and use it to fill the whole screen instead. I've experimented with Size/Position and Camera/Zoom shot, but with no success. Help!

Comments

browj2 wrote on 4/30/2018, 11:48 PM

Hi,

Use Section to crop, then Size/Position and it will automatically fill the screen if the proportions are the same.

John CB

johnebaker wrote on 5/1/2018, 4:25 AM

. . . . Use Section to crop, then Size/Position and it will automatically fill the screen if the proportions are the same. . . . .

This can all be done in the Section dialog there is no need to use Size/position - ensure the 2 options highlighted in the image below are set as shown.

the effect will be applied when you deselect the video clip after cropping.

. . . . the person I'm videoing is too far away and take a smaller portion of that clip (close-up, not duration) and use it to fill the whole screen instead . . . .

Unfortunately there is a down side to doing this - using the Section option the 'cropped area' cannot be too small or you will run into very poor image quality when full screen - how bad will depend on how much cropping you can get away which depends on your source video resolution and what the final export resolution is.

For example if your source video is 1920 x 1080 and you crop to 960 x 540 ie 1/4 of the area and then have this fill the screen then it is going to look very poor if your export as 1920 x 1080.

Note: if your preview monitor is set to use a lower resolution for performance then the 'crop' will look even worse, however a test export of the cropped portion at the final video resolution you want to use is the better test.

HTH

John EB

terrypin wrote on 5/1/2018, 10:56 AM

Hi,

I may want to use images or videos even though their poor resolution would be unacceptable at 1920x1080 export setting. (Not necessarily as a result of cropping, although that’s clearly one potential cause.) I therefore sometimes compromise by placing four such related objects in a collage, each neatly occupying a quarter of the screen. That way I get to keep the material in the video, and I can caption and/ or narrate it without its visual flaws being so obvious.