Participant

Answered

I want to remove black bars around my videos

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
August 5, 2026
7 replies
76 views

I have tried three methods, none seem to work. I use the 2026 version of Premiere Pro. Any suggestions?

Correct answer Ann Bens

Show screenshot entire UI with timeline, effect controls open on clip,

screenshot sequence settings and media properties and clip open in Source monitor.

John T Smith

Community Expert

You might want to resize your pictures to match your sequence before importing

If you are on Windows

Tool for bulk resizing photos on Windows is Microsoft PowerToys. Free, official, and integrates directly into your right-click menu, allowing you to resize multiple photos instantly without a separate app.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

Ann Bens

Correct answer

Community Expert

Show screenshot entire UI with timeline, effect controls open on clip,

screenshot sequence settings and media properties and clip open in Source monitor.

J

JC@TTAuthor

Participant

Thanks, Stan, but unfortunately, I’ve been through that and it hasn’t help. I can remove the black bars by stretching the image, but you can imagine the result.

JC

Stan Jones

Community Expert

@JC@TT,

Oops. I only considered images that were larger than your 720 sequence. If they are smaller, then, yes, you have to scale them up to fill the black bars.

This comes up a lot with vertical/portrait phone shots in a traditional horizontal/landscape sequence. A technique often used is to move your primary image to a higher video track (e.g. V2), and leave it at 100% scale, position as you wish, with the black bars. Then place the image again on V1, scale it up to fill the black bars, and add blur so the primary image gets the viewers focus.

If that is not it, give us the info Ann requested.

Stan

Stan Jones

Community Expert

@JC@TT,

There are many factors that can affect this.

The “timeline setting” is the Sequence settings. Sequence → Sequence settings. If those are 1280x720, you’re good to go. The aspect ratio is 16:9, but most images are not. Just to get the feel of this, turn OFF scaling in preferences (Edit → Preferences → Media → Default Media Scaling → None).

Now add an image to the sequence, select it, and in Effect Controls, change the scaling until it fits as you want it. If it is a 4:3 image, and you make it “fit” on only one side, you will get black bars. Scale it until there are no black bars.

Stan

John T Smith

Community Expert

What three methods?

What is your video, and what is your timeline setting?

J

JC@TTAuthor

Participant

The methods are 1. scale to frame size, 2. scale and crop in fx motion, 3. aspect ratio, though I don’t think I know how to do that one right.

I’m not sure I understand your question: What is your video? But there’s very little video in this video, it’s mostly a series of images that accompany the soundtrack.

As far as the timeline setting, I take it you want the video frame size: 1280 horizontal, 720 vertical, 16.9.

Thanks for asking, John.

JC for Jean-Christian and John for my American friends :-)

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