Why are my photos being cropped?

[Ignas5EAA]

Every time I insert a photo and set it to frame size it shows up all well in the preview, but after I render the video I get full square black frames around my photo and it's not to scale.

What is the problem? I do not understand.

I attach the pictures showing the issue.

[David Arbor · Accepted solution]

There's nothing wrong here; your Program monitor is showing the exact same thing with the black bars on the left and right. You have a square photo in a rectangular composition. Scaling to Frame Size is going to scale the photo up to fit the frame, not fill it. You can select the photo, go to the Effects Controls panel and scale the photo up more so it fills the frame.

Also, in the future, please attach your images in-line in your post, rather than files so we don't have to download unknown files.

[Ignas5EAA]

"your Program monitor is showing the exact same thing with the black bars on the left and right"

Left and right, but not up and down, it has a FULL FRAME from all sides, I don't want the up and down black frames, I want my photo in the final render to look as it looks in the preview. It is wrong, it doesn't look in the final render as it looks in the preview. If I do set to frame size it looks all nice in the preview without up / down black borders, but once I render the video those up / down black borders appear and make my photo smaller.

"You can select the photo, go to the Effects Controls panel and scale the photo up more so it fills the frame."

Tried it, I'm still a complete newbie to Adobe Premiere Pro, I just distort the photo even more. Set to frame size does it perfect, I just don't understand why after the render my photo is cropped.

[Richard M Knight]

What are your sequence settings, are you using non square pixels?

[Ignas5EAA]

Can you explain to me please what you mean sequence settings, non square pixles? I'm completely new to all of this, it's extremely confusing for me.

[Ignas5EAA]

Why does it crop my photos but my videos don't have those annoying up / down black frames..

[Ignas5EAA]

This is my final rendered video..

My intro photo has a full "black box frame" around it, it's "squished", while in preview mode when I do set to frame size it shows no up / down black borders and the photo doesn't look "squished", only after rendering it looks like crap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08Jv13mEejk

[Jeff Bugbee]

This is what I see on this link. You only have black bars on the left and right. 

[David Arbor]

Ah, I see. Then yes, as Richard said, it's either your sequence settings, your ouput settings, or a mismatch between the two. Unless there's a good reason for the sequence settings you chose (perhaps you created a new sequence from a non-standard size photo), it's easiest if you create a sequence with a standard video size. 1920x1080 is a very common HD frame size. You can create a new sequence using one of the presets (there are a million of them, but the SLR ones are simple and a good place to start), or drag a video clip onto the New Sequence icon.

After doing that, you can copy and paste the content of your existing sequence into the new one and you will likely have to rescale things to fit. 

When that's all finished you need to make sure your export settings match your sequence settings. There are some handy presets for that. Choose H.264 as your format, then for the preset try "Match Source - High Bitrate" as a starter. There's a lot to learn about video settings and video encoding, but these two things can get you started more quickly without going down that rabbit hole.

[Ignas5EAA]

"Ah, I see. Then yes, as Richard said, it's either your sequence settings, your ouput settings, or a mismatch between the two. Unless there's a good reason for the sequence settings you chose (perhaps you created a new sequence from a non-standard size photo), it's easiest if you create a sequence with a standard video size. 1920x1080 is a very common HD frame size. You can create a new sequence using one of the presets (there are a million of them, but the SLR ones are simple and a good place to start), or drag a video clip onto the New Sequence icon."

Oh my this is rocket science to me. I don't even understand what "sequence settings" mean or actually do.. Can you answer why in preview it shows fine, but once rendered it's all changed?

Imagine me as a complete noob with 0 editing experience, which I am. I'm just using whatever default settings Adobe gave me..

[David Arbor]

The problem is, there's no default settings, something was setup based on your first action.

A sequence is simply the timeline you're editing in, and that sequence has a frame size or resolution. Think of this like your TV—it's a fixed box that never changes size. A HDTV has a resolution of 1920x1080, which means 1920 pixels across and 1080 pixels down; this creates a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Now, think of all the content you watch on your TV, whether it's old standard definition TV shows, current HDTV shows, or epic movies. Those were all shot in different formats, right? The standard definition TV show has an aspect ratio of 4:3 which is why you see those black bars on the left and right of the screen; an HD show will fill the screen because it was shot at the same aspect ratio as the TV itself; and a big epic like Ben-Hur was shot with an incredibly wide aspect ratio, which means that it will be heavily letterboxed with giant black bars on the top and bottom.

This is essentially the same thing as your sequence—it's a container that you're putting all sorts of media into. That media might not fit your container, but the container can only be one size.

To add to that, when you're ready to export your video, you can export it at a completely different size. Sometimes you might edit at a higher quality you need to export, or perhaps you just don't know what settings to use and you inadvertently squish that rectangle into a different sized box.

There's really a lot to know to edit and export video successfully, and if all this sounds like rocket science then I think you'll actually have a better time watching some "Getting Started" tutorials vs trying to figure things out without a visual in forum posts. I strongly reccomend watching the first several of these beginner tutorials, just so you can start to wrap your head around the paradigm of video editing: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/tutorials.html

We're certainly here for any questions, but I think it would take less of your time to watch these tutorials, and I think you would get more information if you started with them first.

[Ignas5EAA]

Thank you for the lenghty explanation.

"This is essentially the same thing as your sequence—it's a container that you're putting all sorts of media into. That media might not fit your container, but the container can only be one size."

Now this is what confuses me. Why doesn't "set to frame size" doesn't work then? In preview it does exactly what I want (the photo), but when I render it's all cropped up with those black border walls?

[Ignas5EAA]

Here's how it looks for me.

"We're certainly here for any questions, but I think it would take less of your time to watch these tutorials, and I think you would get more information if you started with them first."

I certainly wouldn't waste your time here but I have no idea where to look for a solution to this EXACT PROBLEM I'm having, I've been googling all over the place unsucesfully..

[David Arbor]

Because your export settings don't match your sequence settings. Imagine you packed all sorts of presents nicely inside a box, but before you decided to gift the box you stepped all over it :D, it's no longer the same size box as it was before.

Perhaps that's a ridiculous example, but you have to tell Premiere how you want to export the sequence, it's not enough to set it up in the first place. This is why those Match Source presets I mentioned earlier are useful when exporting. 

The Set to Frame Size command has nothing to do with exporting, it only tells Premiere how to fit that specific piece of media into your working sequence.

While working, you're dealing with media of all sorts of sizes, and that sequence is your lowest common denominator, the thing that everything must fit inside. Exporting is for how you want to handle publishing that unified sequence as a single video file.

[Ignas5EAA]

I understand now.

So for a complete newbie to Adobe. What do I have to set so my intro photo is exported as it is shown on my preview?

[David Arbor]

And you're not wasting our time, I just think you'll have better luck if you start learning some fundamentals.

But looking at your screenshots (and thanks for embedding them this time), it looks like you are exporting your video that matches your sequence settings. In that case, I think it might be your player. Have you shrunk it down or stretched the video player out so it's more of a rectangle? It could just be how the interface of the placer is working. I would try a different player, upload the video to YouTube, or import it back into Premiere and stick it at the end of your working timeline. If it fits and matches the content of your timeline perfectly, then it's just the player. 

You're still editing at a non-standard frame which could cause problems depending on what you want to do, or it might be just fine, it's always hard to tell without more detail.

[David Arbor]

I think you're already doing it. Judging by the screenshot of the Export Settings dialog you posted, your Output resolution matches your Source resolution, which is why I said I think it might be your player that's the problem. You need to view your video somewhere else to confirm that the black bars on the top and bottom aren't actually part of your video. You can try installing VLC player (https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html), or like I mentioned, drag the exported video back into your editing timeline to see if there are black bars on the top and bottom there. If not, then the bars aren't part of your video and are only showing up based on how the video player is sized.

[Ignas5EAA]

I tried a few standard Windows 10 players and VLC, all show exactly the same black border box. Youtube also shows the same..

[Ignas5EAA]

"or like I mentioned, drag the exported video back into your editing timeline to see if there are black bars on the top and bottom there. If not, then the bars aren't part of your video and are only showing up based on how the video player is sized."

How do I know if it's right if the preview never shows what you will get once you actually render the video?

This is how it looks when I import my already rendered and finished video.

[Jeff Bugbee]

You need to make your sequence the same resolution as your video. Easiest way is to create a new sequence based off the video, which you can do by dragging your video to the "New Item" button, as shown below.

Then export in the same resolution.

[Ignas5EAA]

"You need to make your sequence the same resolution as your video."

I do not understand the whole sequence thing. I just don't want the photo cropped once I pop it into the video editing timeline and render it..

"Easiest way is to create a new sequence based off the video, which you can do by dragging your video to the "New Item" button, as shown below."

I do not understand 😞

[Jeff Bugbee]

"I do not understand"

Ignas, I inluded a GIF to show you exactly what to do. Are you unable to see the GIF or do you not understand what is happening in it and are unable to reproduce it?

[David Arbor]

Sorry, but I'm a little confused now. I thought you said you were expecting to see the black bars on the left and right, but the problem was that you were seeing them on the top and bottom when you exported them. That last screenshot you posted, and even the one on YouTube shows pillarboxing (bars on the left and right) which is exactly what's showing in your Premiere timeline in your original screenshots.

You also get a preview in the Export Settings dialog when you adjust your settings.

Is the issue that the intro image isn't filling the frame? If so, that goes back to my earlier post that Set to Frame Size is going to fit the entire image to your sequence, not fill it, and if you want to fill the whole frame with your image you have to open the Effects Controls panel and scale it up there. If this isn't what you want, then I'm missing something else, sorry.

[Ignas5EAA]

"Sorry, but I'm a little confused now. I thought you said you were expecting to see the black bars on the left and right, but the problem was that you were seeing them on the top and bottom when you exported them. That last screenshot you posted, and even the one on YouTube shows pillarboxing (bars on the left and right) which is exactly what's showing in your Premiere timeline in your original screenshots."

I don't mind the left / right black borders. I do not want the up / down black borders.

"You also get a preview in the Export Settings dialog when you adjust your settings."

And that also shows everything fine, until you render the video and see that it's not..

"Is the issue that the intro image isn't filling the frame? If so, that goes back to my earlier post that Set to Frame Size is going to fit the entire image to your sequence, not fill it, and if you want to fill the whole frame with your image you have to open the Effects Controls panel and scale it up there. If this isn't what you want, then I'm missing something else, sorry."

Yes that's the issue (I don't mind left / right black borders again, just the up / down ones). I just want my photo to look exactly as it looks in the preview in the final rendered video, that is all. It looks how I want it to look when I do "set frame to scale", I want it to look just like that after the rendering too.

[Ignas5EAA]

I want it to look like this after the final render..

I don't want it to look like this 😞