Cropping to portrait format - is this possible?

collie581

Member Location: Aberdeen Scotland Joined: Oct 21, 2015 11:43 Messages: 92 Offline

Solved by

Jan 20, 2017 07:02

Good Morning. A new day a new question!

I am using the Chroma Key technique to put my presenter in places we cannot afford to visit for my documentary. I can get this to work quite well except that I cannot get a full length shot of him presenting as if I go further back for the shots my green screen is too small and I start getting all my living room furniture(!) showing round the edges. I thought if I could crop the clip just to the area of the green screen this would solve the problem. I maybe be missing something obvious here but when I use the cropping tool I cannot see a custom crop option. Each crop seems to retain the same proportions as the original clip.

Do I have to create a mask to achieve what I want?

Regards

Nigel

ynotfish

Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline

Jan 20, 2017 13:25

Hi Nigel -

In PDR14, you can only crop a video to the same aspect ratio as the project. i.e. 16:9 or 4:3. PDR15 allows much greater flexibility.

Using a mask should work in your case. If you uncheck "Maintain Aspect Ratio" in the Mask module of PiP Designer, you can reproportion it any way you wish.

The screenshots attached should help explain.

Cheers - Tony


Filename	Presenter Mask.png	Download
Description
Filesize	481 Kbytes
Downloaded:	52 time(s)


Filename	Presenter Chroma Key.png	Download
Description
Filesize	592 Kbytes
Downloaded:	49 time(s)

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collie581

Member Location: Aberdeen Scotland Joined: Oct 21, 2015 11:43 Messages: 92 Offline

Jan 20, 2017 14:09

Thanks Tony,

That is what I thought I would have to do. Nice to know this option is in PD15.

By the way your presenter is much better looking than mine!

regards

Nigel

CS2014

Senior Contributor Location: USA-Eastern Time Zone Joined: Sep 16, 2014 16:44 Messages: 629 Offline

Jan 22, 2017 09:27

I thought we said no pictures of my wife belly-dancing on the threads Tony? Hehehee

CS

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tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Jan 22, 2017 12:22

I had already typed a response to the OP on how to create the mask but saw that Tony sent his response first. After reading his post found that any of the masks near the top would work after unchecking maintain aspect ratio. The green screen subjects are obtainable from sites such as Vimeo and YT.