Transparent Portrait Video Overlay in a Landscape Project

[WernerGg]

I have a 16:9 landscape video project. Within the timeline there is a clip which is a landscape photo media element. This photo shall be overlaid with a portrait 9:16 video clip from a second video track. Unfortunatly the vertical margins arround the portrait video clip are rendered black not transparent. Hence the underlying photo is no longer visible.

How can I make the margins of the portrait video clip transparent instead of black? I tried several things, including the "Transform.Clip" effect, but I did not succeed.

(Premiere Elements 2025, Windows 11)

[pier luigit69016332]

Si tratta di due foto o di due video? Nel primo caso puoi utilizzare Adobe
Photoshop Elements e comporre una sola clip da due foto con l'ordine che
preferisci. Attenzione che la clip 9:16 deve essere ritagliata perché
troppo alta rispetto alla clip 16:9

[Steve Grisetti]

If your photo does not have black margins on its sides, this should not happen. 

What does your original photo look like? Can you post it to this forum?

[WernerGg]

Apparently my request was not understood.

The photo is a locomotive in 16:9 landscape format (250521 FE 02 ...jpg). The video is a 9:16 portrait video with a pan across the locomotive from front to back (250521 FE 03...mp4).
The video should be superimposed on the photo.

The aim is to make the black vertical margins of the portrait video transparent so that the photo underneath remains visible.

[Steve Grisetti]

In the video clip of the train you provided, the black margins on the sides are part of your video. Is this video directly from your camera/phone? If so, it should not included these black margins on the sides.

[WernerGg]

Hello Steve,

As you can see on the VLC screenshot below, the video has no black borders, even though it has a resolution of 1920x1080 (and not 1080x1920). It was recorded with an Android Pixel 9 in an upright position.

The black borders in Premiere Elements only seem to appear when the video is added as a clip to the timeline of a landscape project.

But regardless of this, the question is how to make the black edges transparent. If it were a photo, I would mask them in Photoshop and replace them with transparency or erase them with the background eraser.

[Steve Grisetti]

You can try using the Videomerge effect to make the black margins transparent. Or a better solution would be to apply the Crop effect and trim off the sides.

But that doesn't really resolve the issue -- which is that they should not be there in the first place!  I'm not seeing that when I had videos to upper tracks in my projects -- even when the video was shot upright on my phone. So there must be something unique about your Pixel video.

[Ann Bens]

Use the crop to eliminate the black borders.

Can you upload the clip in order to test?

[Ann Bens]

Use the croptool to get rid of the black bars.

Can you upload the clip for testing.