How to Crop a Video in Premiere Elements 2019

[Gromi7]

Simple question, I think, but one for which I can't find an answer:

How do I crop a video? I'm not asking about trimming or making clips of the video. Instead, I have a video where I want to discard the bottom 25% of the video image for the entirety of the video. I'm not seeing a way to do this.

Thanks for any help.

[Ann Bens]

Put the crop effect on an adjustment layer for the entire timeline.

[Steve Grisetti]

Do note, however, that cropping a video isn't like, say, cropping a photo.

Cropping a photo actually changes the shape of the photo. But cropping a video changes the shape of the video WITHIN THE PROJECT.

In other words, if you crop a video in a 1920x1080 video project, your finished video will still be 1920x1080. The sides or sides you crop off your video, however, will appear as black bars (unless you enlarge your video to fill the space).

Is that what you're trying to do?

[Bill Sprague]

Ann and Steve always get this right.  That said....

"Cropping" can mean a few different things.  If you mean cutting off unwanted parts on the sides, there is an easy way.  Click your mouse on the middle of the monitor panel.  Two little dots show up.  You can then grab them and move the "frame" out.   Then you can grab the picture in the middle again and slide the entire image around for composition.

(That's my granddaughter in the middle between my son and I.  I'm the old one.)

[Ann Bens]

What you are doing is not cropping but scaling up with unwanted quality loss of the video.

[Bill Sprague]

Ann,

If you shoot 4K it works pretty well in a project with 1080 output intended for Vimeo like venues.    Is there a "resizing" component in the "crop effect" similar to what can be done in Photoshop?

Thanks.

Bill

[Ann Bens]

Elements is not Photoshop. Video behaves different from stills.

And we are not talking UDH in HD project also different behavior.

[Bill Sprague]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Ann+Bens  wrote

Elements is not Photoshop. Video behaves different from stills.

Yes!  That is exactly my question.  What is the behavior of the crop effect you suggested compared to the one I suggested?  I'm not seeing a difference in output quality.  What am I missing?  What should I be looking at?

[Ann Bens]

The way interpolation is done.

[Bill Sprague]

Ann,

Are you saying that the crop effect "interpolates" and the scaling process does not?

Thanks.

Bill

[Ann Bens]

No.

[Bill Sprague]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Ann+Bens  wrote

No.

Can you elaborate just a little bit?

When I google for video interpolation I get articles on motion smoothing.  I'm trying to figure out the difference in how Premiere Elements does "scaling" and "cropping".   Maybe I'm just mixing the words up!

Thanks again!!

Bill

[Ann Bens]

Cropping means cutting a piece of the video off but the frame stays the same. Black bars appear.

Scaling on the timeline is making the image bigger or smaller as in zoom in or out within the same frame.

Zoom in/scale up means image loss.

Exporting UHD to HD means scaling down but no image loss.

Exporting HD to UDH also means upscaling and with image loss.

If you are cropping an image black bars appear.

If you want to get rid of these black bars you can scale the image up.

Any upscaling you do will coast you image quality. (up to a certain point it is not noticable, I tend not to go past 110%).

Its different when dropping UDH in a HD timeline

UHD is 2x the size of HD

Scale to framesize needs to be turned off, otherwise the image will be set to 100% resolution and losing image when zooming in.

Hope this makes sense.

[Bill Sprague]

Thank you Ann.

It makes more sense now.  I was using the word "cropping" when I should be using the words "scaling" or "upscaling".   I was momentarily confused by the possibility that there was a quality interpolation improvement process in somewhere in Premiere Elements when upscaling.   Televisions and Blu-Ray players do a remarkable job of making low resolution DVDs appear to have a much higher picture quality.  There is software for photography that improves quality for enlargements.  Perhaps there is similar for videography.

Again, thanks.

Bill

[Ann Bens]

After Effects has an upscaling feature build in and for Pro there is a plugin by Red Giant Instant 4K.

[Bill Sprague]

Ann BensAfter Effects has an upscaling feature build in and for Pro there is a plugin by Red Giant Instant 4K.

Thanks!  That will be fun to read about and maybe even try!!  Every time I re-double my efforts at learning Premiere Pro I return to Elements because it fits what I do so well.  I haven't even tried After Effects yet!

My current habit is to shoot 4K, edit in 4K and (usually) put it on Vimeo.  Most friends and family watch the Vimeo conversion to HD.   

[Kartick Vaddadi]

Hi Steve, thanks for highlighting the distinction. How do I crop like a photo? In other words, I want the final export dimensions to be lower. I don't want black bars, and I don't want upscaling, either.

[Kartick Vaddadi]

I've posted more details here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-elements-discussions/how-do-i-rotate-and-crop-a-video-like-a...

[Peru Bob]

How do I crop like a photo? In other words, I want the final export dimensions to be lower. I don't want black bars, and I don't want upscaling, either.

By @Kartick Vaddadi

What are the pixel dimensions of the photo?

What are the pixel dimensions of the project?

What are the pixel dimensions of the device where you want to view the exported video?

You may not be able to do what you want to do in Premiere Elements.

[Shivangi_Gupta]

Hi gromi7,

Thanks for reaching out. Did you try the suggestions provided above? Let us know if you have any other query.

Thanks,

Shivangi