16/9 portrait photos on widescreen timeline

Jack S wrote on 3/9/2011, 11:27 AM
I like to end my video projects with a photo slideshow. Inevitably some of the photos will be portrait and they don't look very good in a widescreen video.
I decided to tinker with the pan and crop tool to see if I could make these tall, thin photos look any better. This is how I do it.
Bring the photo onto the timeline and make it about 13 seconds long (this ensures a nice, steady pan). Using the pan and crop tool make the pan start at the top or the bottom of the photo. Where the pan starts depends upon the subject matter. Add a keyframe then move the frame to the other end of the photo. Add another keyframe. Right click on each keyframe and select Smooth. This ensures that the pan starts smoothly. If you need to hold on any part of the photo, increase its length and add keyframes at the required position in the pan.
The pan/crop tool is very powerful and is well worth tinkering with.

My system
Genshin Infinity Gaming PC
Motherboard Gigabyte H610M H: m-ATX w/, USB 3.2, 1 x M.2
Power Supply Corsair RM750X
Intel Core i7-13700K - 16-Core [8P @ 3.4GHz-5.4GHz / 8E @ 2.50GHz-4.20GHz]
30MB Cache + UHD Graphics, Ultimate OC Compatible
Case Fan 4 x CyberPowerPC Hyperloop 120mm ARGB & PWM Fan Kit
CPU Fan CyberPowerPC Master Liquid LITE 360 ARGB AIO Liquid Cooler, Ultimate OC Compatible
Memory 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5/5200MHz Corsair Vengeance RGB
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB - Ray Tracing Technology, DX12, VR Ready, HDMI, DP
System drive 1TB WD Black SN770 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD - 5150MB/s Read & 4900MB/s Write
Storage 2 x 2TB Seagate BarraCuda SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 7200RPM
Windows 11 Home (x64)
Monitors
Generic Monitor (PHL 222V8) connected to GeForce RTX 4060 Ti
Generic Monitor (SAMSUNG) connected to iGPU

Camcorder
SONY Handycam HDR-XR550VE

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 3/9/2011, 12:34 PM
This is one of the reasons i think widescreen is a huge mistake. If anything, the newer formats should be closer to square than wide. *sigh*

I've used your method quite often with good effect. There are a few times though when the movement is distracting or when the whole photo needs to be seen all at once. In those cases i'll put some other image or texture behind to fill in the empty spaces on the sides.