Long story short, I want to import a still image with the proper aspect ratio and be able to resize or move it on screen.
I’ve been trying to figure this out. I drag a jpg into the Video Sequence Editor, it stretches to fit the video frame. Don’t want that so I go to the Strip tab in the sidebar and click Offset. This changes the jpg to its correct aspect ratio and I can reposition it using the X and Y coordinates.
Now I want to resize the jpg so the full image fits in the frame so I go to Add/Effect Strip/Transition. When I adjust the newly added Scale coordinates the jpg is cropped to the part that was visible before.
So is this a dumb question? Wrong category? Unintelligible? Not possible?
If the image is larger than the video’s dimensions it is cropped when I apply the Transform effect strip (I accidentally typed Transition before). Having trouble getting that Ken Burns effect.
Thanks for replying. Hopefully this vid will show my process and the issue I’m having. I just want to scale and move the full book cover at the correct proportion. I must be doing something terribly wrong.
To me it looks like a bug, here I am using 2.81a release. If you scale it to the size you want and then toggle off uniform scale it seems that it might work.
It’s not a bug just a really good impersonation of one. Interesting how clearly the dev describes the problem but it’s Blenders regular behavior going back a ways. Time for the workarounds
@dcrosby: Yeah, I followed the link you posted and, y’know…
It’s still a bunch of baloney.
One madman in that linked thread actually proposes (proudly, I might add) the use of drivers to control the aspect ratio! I can’t think of any other video editing software or graphic manipulation software that handles imported images the way our beloved Blender does. Why should anyone have to add an effect strip to an image to retain its original size/aspect ratio? Madness, I say. And I’m one who actually likes (most of) Blender’s quirkiness! I always figured the devs would eventually fix this not-a-bug-it’s-a-feature.
“NOTABUG -> WF” isn’t an answer in this case.
And don’t get me started on “where’s the Jump to the Beginning/End of a selected strip command already?”
The good news is that there’s an addon called Power Sequencer that addresses the Jump to the Beginning function I think. The bad news is I had to resort to iMovie for the basic functionality I asked about. iMovie is… limited, to say the least. Hopefully they’ll address it at some point.
Found the answer to my question. The solution is to use Gimp or Affinity Photo to place images on a canvas of the same size as your movie, 1920 x 1080 for instance. Save as png with transparency. Now when importing to Blender the aspect ration will be correct and the excess canvas will be transparent. Use the transform strip to resize.
Obviously enlarging will lose a certain amount of resolution so either be careful about how much enlargement or crop the image as needed before exporting from your image editor.
Actually that takes us back to the beginning of the thread and my overlong video I posted of the issue I was having. If your image is larger than the video dimensions Offset hangs portions outside the visible area. Adding the Transform strip to achieve the Ken Burns effect crops the image at the borders of the video.
I am realizing though, that the canvas I mentioned isn’t really necessary as long as the image does not exceed the video dimensions. You still lose resolution if you try to enlarge which is pretty bad for a vertical image that you’d like to fill the screen.
I always figured the devs would eventually fix this not-a-bug-it’s-a-feature.
