Blacking out top of video

[dianag54508673]

Apologies for not RTFM and failing to find the answer up to now.

I have shot a real estate video (4 hour round trip) but find that the framing on my device and the framing I wanted are different.

This means I either have to go back and reshoot, with is time and weather dependant, neither of which are in my favour, or simply add a black stripe across the top of the video.

Is there any way to do this?

What I would ideally like is the ability to set the size and position (obviously) but also change either the size or opacity over time. The need for blotting out the top of the video arises halfway through the video, so if I could either get the size of the black bar across the top to grow (downwards) from one point to another, or if I could get the opacity to increase (from 0 to 100%), that would be great.

So, in summary - the video needs to have a strip at the top of the movie made unseeable, halfway through the movie.

Any (quick) help would be gratefully received.

I have Elements 14

[Steve Grisetti]

Sort of.

You can certainly mask out or crop out a side of your video and even animate the crop (or whatever effect you choose) -- but it would still appear within a standard 16:9 or 4:3 frame.

What model of camcorder or recording device was this video shot with? What is the video's resolution, as measured in pixels? (A phone, for instance, shoots 1920x1080 when held sideways and 1080x1920 when held upright.)

[dianag54508673]

It was shot with a drone (Phantom 3 Pro). If you give a few minutes I'll fire it up and retrieve the settings.

[dianag54508673]

OK - it's 2.7k (2704x1520 24fps PAL format saved as .mp4) Image size 4:3

[Ann Bens]

dianag54508673 wrote:

OK - it's 2.7k (2704x1520 24fps PAL format saved as .mp4) Image size 4:3

24 frames is never PAL but NTSC.

PAL is 25 or 50 fps.

[Steve Grisetti]

Well, technically that's 16:9 -- but I'm really not sure what to do with that resolution. It's not HD (1920x1080) and it's not UHD (3840x2160).

But you should still be able to edit it in a 16:9 project. It just depends on whether you want to over-rez it to edit it in a UHD project or rez it down to edit it in a 1920x1080 project.

[dianag54508673]

OK, for anyone else's sake, I figured it out: in Expert, add the Crop special effect from the Special Fx bar, adjust the top, bottom, and sides as required and adjust the opacity to fade it in and out. Split the original video and start the effect at the point you want.

Thanks to Steve for your reply but I suspect you are at a higher level than I could quickly (or indeed slowly) get to in time. I found a simple approach, which suited my abilities!

[Steve Grisetti]

Any solution is a great solution, Diana. Happy moviemaking!