Crop does not work with key frames

[moritzell]

I have a strange problem with my project:

I want to keyframe the scaling of a video like this 50% -> 55% -> 50% in order to crop out something for a moment.

When I change the scaling without the keyframes, it works - But as soon as I keyframe it, the crop does not show in the preview.

Any ideas on what might be broken here?

[David Arbor]

Can you please post screenshots, or even better, a screen recording showing this happening? I'm not sure what you're trying to do. You say you're going from 50%>55%, but that doesn't tell us if that clip is currently filling the frame because it's larger than your sequence size or if you're doing a picture-in-picture effect. You say crop, but are you using the Crop effect, a mask, or do you just mean that you want it to scale outside the sequence frame and that's the crop? Please be more specific.

It sounds like your clip might be filling the frame at 50%, and you want to temporarily zoom in to hide something, but when you add the keyframes the zoom doesn't happen?

[moritzell]

Here is a link showing the issue. I create 3 keyframes, the first and last should scale with 50% (4k in 1080p timeline) and the middle one should crop in a bit. That does not happen in the preview window.

2018 11 19 15 24 29 - YouTube

Edit: It does not show up after exporting it either. And I dont want to use a nested sequence as well because I dont want to lose my transitions.

[David Arbor]

Thank you for posting that so quickly. This is why screenshots and screen recordings are so helpful. You have a bunch of Time Remapping keyframes on your clip. The Time Remapping effects is happening after the scale, so the Scale keyframes are based on the original time of the clip, but the Time Remapping is happening after that and causing your scale to occur at a different time than where you want it to. If you don't want to nest your clip then do the Scale changes there, you can add the Transform effect on your clip. Animation the Scale parameter there, then you should be good.

[moritzell · Accepted solution]

I suspected something like this but what confuses me is, that the time remapping keyframes in the editing window are in sync with my scale keyframes.

Is there no way to find out where my scale keyframes get applied in the end? Being able to edit something on a timeline in the editing tab that does not translate to said timeline in the end is not very intuitive if you ask me.

Plus: The Transform effect behaves exactly the same.

It is a bit sad to know that nested sequences destroy transitions completely, because they would be the only alternative in theory.

I found a workaround that is just as unintuitive but it works: I just put the crop transform effect onto the master clip. Pretty wonky way to do it, but it works.

Edit: What I really dislike, is, that PP just sh*ts itself as soon as anything gets done to the replay speed. Be it time remapping, interpret footage or the plain "speed/duration" tab.

Already noticed that in the past when working with 50p footage that got slowed (via the speed/duration option) to 50%/25p. As soon as I wanted to apply the ProDAD Mercalli stabilizer, everything just broke, because the effect does not work based on the final speed / framerate / duration of the clip which it should. Using a nested sequence is mostly unusable as well, because you cannot apply transitions to it.

I am pretty mad because I often work with slow motion and sometimes clips still need to get stabilized a little and I have yet to find a way to do that.

In this case, it happens again, just with the difference that I used time remapping to speed up some sequences.

[David Arbor]

I guess that actually makes sense that Time Remapping would happen at the end of the effects chain, in case you have any time-based effects that you'd also want remapped. Good to know that putting the clip on the Master tab works. You could also try an adjustment layer with the Transform effect on top of your clip to see if that does the trick.

The issue with the Time Remapping KFs lining up with your Scale KFs in the ECP is not so intuitive, I agree, but it's because those KFs are place at specific frames, then the clip is being visually extended in the timeline. Everything makes sense and is working the way it should, it's just confusing. I'm not sure what a better visual would be, but you should definitely file a feature request on UserVoice (Premiere Pro: Hot (3257 ideas) – Adobe video & audio apps

[David Arbor]

I would recommend applying your stabilization first, then nesting the clips. This is similar to the workflow you would use in After Effects, where you would stabilize, pre-comp, change speed, then stack effects.

[moritzell]

The main problem with nesting is the following:

1) If you nest single clips in order to apply stabilization, transitions are impossible

2) If you nest your whole timeline, stabilizing individual clips gets impossible

How could you work around this?

[David Arbor]

I'm not following how transitions are impossible. Could you give a more specific example? Also, just to clarify, I meant applying the stabilization inside the nest, so you're effectively treating the nest as your raw footage that you then work with normally.

[moritzell]

Imagine having 2 clips. Both of which need to be slowed and need to have different settings of stabilization.

If you edit them like you suggest, you have two options:

1) Apply slow motion, nest each clip, apply stabilizer to each nested clip.

-> A transition is not possible because PP cannot use more of the original clip than the nested sequence has in length. A transition always needs a tad more information from both clips in order to blend them together. But PP cannot access the information "inside" the nested sequence from the outside.

2) Apply slow motion and transition, nest both clips into one.

-> Stabilization is not possible because each clip might need different stabilizer settings. The stabilizer cannot distinguish between clip 1 and 2 anymore.

Let me capture both in a moment and link you the video.

[David Arbor]

I suggested applying stabilization then nesting, not slow motion then nesting. You should stabilize your whole clip, then use the full-length stabilized and nested clip, then apply slow motion to that. If you don't want to stabilize the full clip, then yes, you would have to stabilize more than you need to account for transitions.

It's the same workflow as if you stabilized your clips, exported them, then brought them back into PR, except you're nesting them, rather than exporting. This is the common way to work with Warp Stabilizer and speed changes. You'll even get a red warning banner telling you that you can't have speed changes on a Warp Stabilized clip, so you have to move that stabilization into a nest first.

[moritzell]

The issue with that would be rendering times and the amount of work all of this would add:

- It would take ages to stabilize all clips completely before editing (some times I have hours of 4k run&gun footage made up of hundreds of clips). Plus, this cannot be automated.

- Cutting the footage completely then re-adding a second at the beginning and the end of each clip would take ages

- Roughly cutting the footage first, then stabilizing it in order to start the exact cutting process would take close to ages

Why is there no way to achieve this without adding an extra step to everything? If I didnt need transitions, all of this would be easy, but the extra lenght that is needed for a transition just breaks everything.

Maybe not needed anymore, but here is the clip of the formerly mentioned ways: 2018 11 19 16 55 03 - YouTube

[David Arbor]

Not sure what to tell you then. I agree that you rarely want to stabilize the full length clip, unless you're intentionally recording short clips. One way to potentially get around the pain is to stack your clips on alternating tracks while you edit. Then, before you nest them, select the edit points on each side and subtract/add a second. After you nest them, you don't have to combine the clips on a single track if the transitions don't require blending them, if it's something like a wipe or dissolve those clips and the transition can stay on top. I know that's not ideal, but there's just an order of operations that you have to go through when you deal with stabilization and speed changes.