I see that you use the essentials/ free version of PD. This version does have limitations compared to the full version. Bare that in mind when trying the following:
What you get may also be caused by the media player you use…
The steps I would take are:
Open a new project and define / set the format to 16:9
Open you video clip(s) to put them in the media-room and put them on the timeline.
When you get a message like “aspect ratio conflict” then say no, you don’t want to change. (I don’t expect you get this message since the aspect ratio for 1280x720 is still 16:9)
Now click on the clip in the timeline and in the tools-menu click on crop/zoom/pan
In the window that opens, move the white box to make it smaller. In the right-hand top corner, you can see what the result of that “cropping” does.
Now click on ok and in the preview screen you should now the image of the clip you want to get. (in the image included in your message, I see that there is some distortion of the ratio. I guess that is not what you want. (and don’t get if the follow the above steps).
Repeat the above for each clip in the timeline.
No produce the clip(s) to an output format, but when select one, make sure that the ratio is still 16:9
Let us know whether that will do the trick (and whether this can be done with your version at all).
There are many good tutorials out there. Please look at:
https://www.cyberlink.com/learning/powerdirector-video-editing-software/445/how-to-use-the-zoom-and-crop-tools
but there are others too like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-krFuzyOcik&ab_channel=PowerDirectorEssentialsfromtheSharperTurtle
etc. etc.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Sep 11. 2022 16:31