Positioning, scaling and cropping clips in Video by Zaweba
Crop each edge, scale, stretch, flip and fit clips in Video by Zaweba, drag them on the preview, and place picture in picture or fill frame with one click.
Each picture you put on the timeline has to sit somewhere in the frame. Most of the time it simply fills it. Often, though, you want it smaller, larger, cropped, flipped or moved to one side. Video by Zaweba gives you the controls for all of this, and lets you do most of it by dragging on the preview.
The controls
Crop trims each edge of the picture separately, top, bottom, left and right. Use it to cut out a microphone poking into the top of a shot, to remove black bars, or to tighten a picture for a split screen.
Scale makes the picture bigger or smaller while keeping its shape. Separate width and height let you stretch or squash it, which is occasionally useful for graphics, rarely for faces.
Flip mirrors the picture. A shot where someone looks the wrong way for the edit can be flipped so they face into the frame, as long as nothing in it gives the game away, such as text.
Frame fit chooses how a picture of a different shape fits the frame: fit (the whole picture shows, with space around it if the shapes differ), fill (the frame is covered, cropping the picture as needed), stretch to the frame, or original size.
Working on the preview
Drag the picture on the preview to move it. Drag a corner to resize it, keeping its shape. Hold Shift while dragging a corner to stretch it instead. This is often quicker than using sliders, and you can see the result against the rest of the frame as you go.
Quick placement buttons
Two buttons place a clip fast. "Corner (picture in picture)" shrinks the clip and puts it in a corner, for a webcam over a screen recording, a sign language window, or a reaction over gameplay. "Fill frame" sets the clip to cover the whole frame, which is the quick fix for a clip that came in at the wrong size.
Everyday framing jobs
Mixing shapes. A phone video shot upright in a wide timeline can be set to fit, leaving space either side, or to fill, cropping the top and bottom. Fill keeps the frame clean; fit keeps the whole picture. Choose based on what matters in the shot.
Picture in picture. Press the corner button, then drag the picture to fine tune its place and size. Add a little crop to remove any edges you do not want.
Split screens. Crop two clips to half width and place them side by side. Rulers and guides help line them up exactly.
Reframing. A wide shot can be scaled up and moved to make a closer shot. Keep an eye on sharpness, because scaling up enlarges the pixels too.
All of these values can be keyframed. Animate scale for a slow push in. Animate position to slide a picture into place. Animate crop to reveal a picture from one side. The motion path on the preview shows animated position as a line you can drag.
Framing errors to catch
Stretching faces by accident is the classic one. If a person looks too wide or too thin, width and height have come apart; reset them or use plain scale.
Scaling up too far is another. A small enlargement is usually fine; a big one shows softness and noise. Check at full size on the preview.
Flipping shots with writing in them is the third. Text reads backwards, and viewers notice straight away.
The base for every layout
Position, scale and crop are the most basic tools for shaping a frame, and they combine with masks, track mattes, nested timelines and keyframes for more complex layouts. In Video by Zaweba they are always one drag away on the preview, which makes the everyday jobs of placing pictures quick and visual.
