How to Resize Video in Premiere?

How to Resize Video in Premiere? If you’ve ever worked on a project that required video from multiple cameras, each of which had a different frame size or resolution, you’re probably familiar with this issue.

It’s also a common problem if you’re importing a large number of images into your project and their dimensions don’t correspond to the size of your editing window.

In today’s post, we’ll go over three quick and easy ways to streamline this process and make resizing multiple videos and pictures throughout your project in Premiere Pro much easier. We’ll also discuss the differences between Set to Frame and Scale to Frame, as well as which you should use for your projects.

How to Resize Video in Premiere?

Resizing a video is a great choice if the video you’ve added doesn’t fit the size of your overall project. Because the black bars that show up around these smaller clips can be annoying, you might want to resize them to fit. Here are some different ways to do it in Premiere.

Option 1: Set to Frame Size

You can use this method to resize a video to fit the frame size specified in your sequence settings. This is ideally used when you’re importing video clips from several multiple sources and want each video to be the same size even if they have different original sizes and resolutions.

• Find the clip you want to resize on the timeline.
• Right-click the video and choose “Set to Frame Size” from the dropdown menu that appears.

The frame size identified by your sequence settings will now be applied to your video.

Option 2: Scale to Frame Size

While similar to “Set to Frame Size,” it differs in that it also manipulates the pixels within your picture to adjust them to your sequence settings while saving you processing time. This may result in a loss of video quality; however, if time or processing power is limited, this may be a viable option.

• Choose the video on your timeline that you want to resize.
• Choose “Scale to Frame Size” from the context menu when you right-click the video. 

Option 3: Manual Scale

You can also manually resize your original video rather than just setting it to the size or scale of your sequence settings.

• Navigate to the Effects workspace.
• Find the “Motion” drop-down menu in your Effects control panel.
• Under the Motion drop-down, select “Scale” and use the slider to adjust the size of your video within the frame.

What is the difference between Set to Frame and Scale to Frame?

In one case (Scale to Frame), the computer resizes the video to be a perfect fit for your sequence. It rasterizes the video to the exact resolution of the frame size of your sequence. This may appear to be what you expect to happen, but in most cases, it is not.

When you scale to frame in Premiere Pro, it creates a fictitious representation of the video at 100% scale size. In fact, we literally doubled the size of the video to fit our frame size, so the right scale should read 200% when you select ‘Set to Frame Size’.

To elaborate, scale to frame was a feature that was originally intended to scale down very large videos. Enabling scale to frame removes any oversized frames and discards all extra pixels. This, in turn, speeds up your system’s processing time, but it degrades the quality of your video clips.

If you zoom in on ‘scaled to frame’ video or pictures, you will notice more noise and grain, as well as a decrease in overall image quality, than if you set that video to ‘set to frame’.

As a result, whenever I resize videos or pictures in Premiere Pro, I always select ‘set to frame’.

Now that you know how to easily adjust the size of each individual video without having to go in and manually set the scale parameters, let’s go over a few even faster ways to streamline this process, especially for projects that will require a lot of resizing.

Why Is Video Resizing Necessary?

Resizing a video helps to reduce the size of the original file. As a result, your device has more storage space. You’ll have more storage space to store more videos, and your device’s operating speed will improve. When there is a lot of empty space on your device, it tends to lag.

If you wish to share videos with friends or anyone else, resizing a video will allow you to use fewer data. The internet usage that you would have incurred by sharing the original video is reduced. Finally, once you have a video of everything that isn’t needed in the clip, you can resize it to eliminate the undesirable parts from the finished product. You don’t have to be concerned about quality; regardless of the tool you use to resize your video, a good video editor program will not sacrifice it.

How to Import All Videos and Pictures of the Same Size?

There is a quick and easy way to configure the import process so that all of your videos and pictures import at the same, equal size.

1 | Premiere Pro -> Preferences -> Media

2 | Click Default Media Scaling -> Set to Frame Size

Copy and Paste Scale Attributes

Finally, there is a quick and simple way to adjust the size of your media in Premiere Pro. Although this may seem obvious, you can also copy and paste the scale attributes from one video to another.

Simply select the motion attribute and press copy (command C), then navigate to the video you want to modify and press paste (command V). Your video should now have the same scale settings as the one from which you copied it.

Make sure to select the ‘motion’ attribute rather than the ‘scale’ option.

Rotating Videos in Adobe Premiere Pro

Rotating a video can result in some amazing effects on the final product. This is also a very simple effect to create. This is how you rotate a video in Adobe Premiere Pro.

1. Navigate to the Effects Control panel and select Motion from the dropdown menu.
2. The Rotation option should then appear here. You can change the number of rotations on your clip by changing the numerical value next to it. Dragging it right will cause your video to rotate clockwise and vice versa.
3. If you just want to rotate your video in one direction, 90 will rotate it on its right side, 180 will rotate it upside down, and -90 will rotate it to its left side.

Using this method, you can rotate your video regardless of how it is set up or what effects you have on it.

Cropping Videos in Premiere Pro

Cropping a video differs from cropping a photo, but it is still possible in Premiere. You’ll be using a Premiere effect to accomplish this. To crop your video clip, follow these steps.

1. Drag the clip you want to crop onto your timeline.
2. The crop can be found in the Effects panel. It should appear under Transform. Click and drag it onto the clip to be cropped.
3. Now navigate to your Effect Controls. Look for the Crop effect in the dropdown menu. You’ll see the Right, Left, Top, and Bottom options. You can crop your video by dragging the number values beside these.
4. You can also zoom in on your video to fill the entire screen by selecting Zoom. When you move the number when Zoom is selected, your clip will fill the screen to the extent that you specify. 

If you don’t want to use the numerical values, you can crop by highlighting the crop effect in the preview window, and a square with toggle bars should appear around your clip. You can then crop the clip using these bars.

If you want your clip to fade into the crop, select Edge Feather and change the intensity of the gradient with the numerical value. 

Simple Cropped Clips Techniques

Tip #1: Crop videos with a higher resolution than your planned final resolution, if possible.

If you intend to export your project in 1080p, only crop clips with a resolution of 2k or higher. This reduces the possibility of image quality loss and produces a much more seamless final product.

Tip #2: Try to crop as symmetrically and in the same aspect ratio as your final frame as possible.

This results in a better match and no additional image loss when resizing to match your sequence settings.

Tip #3: Only crop what is absolutely necessary; don’t go overboard.

Cropping too much reduces resolution and makes cropped images appear blurrier and lower quality than the rest of your clips. You can try to counteract this with plugins, but a good rule of thumb is to crop only when you have the extra megapixels and only as needed.

You can easily make the necessary changes to your video clips by using the methods described above. It may appear confusing at first, especially if you’re new to video editing and Adobe Premiere, but these tasks will become part of your routine to you over time.

If you get the hang of it, you can try animating these effects with keyframes to create a variety of different visuals. When it comes to making and adjusting effects in Adobe Premiere Pro, the possibilities are limitless.

FAQs on How to Resize Video in Premiere

Originally posted on February 25, 2023 @ 11:16 pm