how do you crop a video frame?

[kr236rk]

sorry to but

that's basically what i'm interested in at the moment - creating mpeg's / avi's in Pinnacle and then customising those files subsequently

for example, i sometimes get a capture with raggedy edges - would love to discover a programme which could tidy up a video frame by cropping it?

R

[yoda313]

By video frame do you mean trimming the length of the video? If so you can do that within pinnacle in the editing stage.

If you mean the actual snapshot of one individual frame in the film then it is more complicated. I'm not sure what the best procedure of this would be. If its only a few frames it might be best to leave it in unaltered because it involves a lot of work.

One thing you can do is use a mpeg editor like tmpgenc plus and crop the video itself. You would copy out the part that you need to fix and then use the crop function to cut off the part you don't want. Than you can process and get a new file with the edges removed. Then you would splice it back in.

[redwudz]

Just to mention, if your final output is a DVD or other structured format, you would have to resize or add back in what you cropped out or your framesize will be incorrect. And that will require re-encoding and some quality loss.

If it's just a few lines at the edges of your video and you plan to watch it on a TV, the ~5% TV overscan will cover the edges and you wouldn't need any cropping. A common example is the head switching noise at the top of a VHS capture. It doesn't show on a TV.

[kr236rk]

thanks Yoda

re: tmpgenc plus

think my post is being re-directed to a more appropriate forum - it would be a whole video (i only make short ones), i capture ciné and sometimes vhs; the ciné is really difficult because no matter how carefully you frame it in a dv cam / monitor, the actual capture can always end up with a tiny bit 'edge' you thought you'd cropped out; the ability to be able to cleanly remove that would be a great tool indeed

Ric

[kr236rk]

Just to mention, if your final output is a DVD or other structured format, you would have to resize or add back in what you cropped out or your framesize will be incorrect. And that will require re-encoding and some quality loss.

If it's just a few lines at the edges of your video and you plan to watch it on a TV, the ~5% TV overscan will cover the edges and you wouldn't need any cropping. A common example is the head switching noise at the top of a VHS capture. It doesn't show on a TV.

thanks Redwudz,

yes, i sometimes get those little flashy bits at the top or bottom of a vhs transfer; sometimes they disappear anyway

would tmpgenc plus be good for frame cropping / re-encoding please?

R

[guns1inger]

What not just do it in Pinnacle, if you are using that to capture and edit ? Simplest would be to create a black .png file with a transparent section cut out of the middle, leaving a border just big enough to cover the crap. Just overlay this onto your video. No cropping and no risk of screwing up the field with a bad resize.

[lordsmurf]

Don't crop it, mask it!

[kr236rk]

Re: crop / mask

looks very cool 8)

is there a guide to doing this please?

thanks

R

[kr236rk]

here's an example of a messy corner, the lower border got slightly vignetted because my dv cam viewer does not exactly give you what is actually going down in the frame. i can get round this - working 'blind' - it means (sadly) cropping right in and losing some good stuff, but >video cam cropping< gets rid of troublesome edges

http://www.vimeo.com/1996923

but it would be nice to have the ability to edit-mask the edges as well as in the above 'test'

thanks again

[guns1inger]

Look up the help files or read the manual. Look for overlays or similar. All you need is a simple .png file that is just the borders and the knowledge to use your editor properly. If it takes you longer than 15 minutes to find the answer in the help files then you need to find a different hobby.

[kr236rk]

oops!

thanks anyway

R

[guns1inger]

Or consider using a better editor.

[hech54]

VirtualDub
Border Control (plugin for Virtualdub)
Frameserve it over to TMPGEnc Plus.
Done