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How to Fit Video to Screen in Premiere Pro

Published in Video Editing Basics 5 mins read

Fitting video to the screen in Adobe Premiere Pro involves adjusting the clip's size and position within your sequence frame. This is a common task, especially when your source footage has a different resolution or aspect ratio than your editing sequence.

Here are the primary methods to ensure your video fits the screen:

Common Methods to Fit Video to Screen

Premiere Pro offers several ways to adjust your video clips to fill the frame of your sequence. The best method often depends on whether you want to maintain the clip's full content (potentially adding black bars) or fill the entire frame (potentially cropping parts of the clip).

  1. Adjusting Scale (Size)
    This is a fundamental way to resize your clip. You can manually adjust the Scale property in the Effect Controls panel.

    • Select the clip in your timeline.
    • Go to the Effect Controls panel.
    • Under Motion, find Scale.
    • Drag the Scale percentage up or down to resize the clip.

    As highlighted in the reference video ("Size. Now while this works great for clips that have proportional 16 by 9 aspect ratios. It's not going to work for Clips like my last one that don't have matching aspect ratios."), this method works well for simply scaling clips up or down when their aspect ratio matches the sequence. However, if the aspect ratios differ (e.g., fitting a 4:3 clip into a 16:9 sequence), simply scaling will result in black bars or require manual cropping/positioning to fill the frame.

  2. Set to Frame Size
    This option automatically resizes the clip to fit the sequence frame based on its longest dimension, without permanently changing the clip's resolution.

    • Right-click on the clip in your timeline.
    • Select Set to Frame Size.
    • Premiere Pro adjusts the Scale property in the Effect Controls so the clip fits within the sequence boundaries. The original resolution is maintained, allowing for zoom-ins without quality loss if the source is higher resolution than the sequence. This method respects the clip's original aspect ratio, which may result in black bars if it doesn't match the sequence.

  3. Scale to Frame Size
    Similar to 'Set to Frame Size', but this method rasterizes (processes) the clip to the sequence's frame size.

    • Right-click on the clip in your timeline.
    • Select Scale to Frame Size.
    • Premiere Pro resizes the clip. While it also fits the clip to the frame, it permanently changes the clip's resolution to match the sequence for display purposes. This can sometimes be simpler for performance but offers less flexibility if you later need to zoom into the clip without pixelation. Like 'Set to Frame Size', it maintains the aspect ratio, potentially leaving black bars.

  4. Manual Adjustment (Scale and Position)
    For precise control or when dealing with mismatched aspect ratios where you want to fill the frame, you may need to adjust both Scale and Position in the Effect Controls panel.

    • Select the clip and open Effect Controls.
    • Adjust Scale until the clip fills the shortest dimension of the frame (e.g., height for wide footage in a tall sequence, or width for tall footage in a wide sequence). This will likely cause part of the clip to extend beyond the frame.
    • Adjust Position (X and Y coordinates) to choose which part of the clip is visible within the frame. This effectively crops the edges of the clip that are outside the sequence boundaries.

Understanding Aspect Ratios

The reference correctly points out the limitation of simple scaling when aspect ratios don't match. An aspect ratio is the proportional relationship between the width and height of an image or video frame (e.g., 16:9 for widescreen, 4:3 for standard definition).

  • If your clip's aspect ratio matches your sequence (e.g., 16:9 clip in a 16:9 sequence), scaling (method 1) or using Set/Scale to Frame Size (methods 2 & 3) will usually fill the frame perfectly.
  • If your clip's aspect ratio does not match your sequence (e.g., a vertical 9:16 video in a horizontal 16:9 sequence), using 'Set to Frame Size' or 'Scale to Frame Size' will result in black bars on the sides. To fill the frame without bars, you would need to use manual scaling and positioning (method 4), which crops the top and bottom of the vertical clip.

Choosing the Right Method

Scenario Recommended Method(s) Outcome
Matching aspect ratios, just need to size Scaling (Method 1), Set/Scale to Frame Size Fills frame, no bars, no cropping.
Mismatched aspect ratios, keep full clip Set/Scale to Frame Size Fills frame on one dimension, adds black bars.
Mismatched aspect ratios, fill frame Manual Adjustment (Scale & Position) (Method 4) Fills frame, crops edges of the clip.
High-res clip, might zoom later Set to Frame Size (Method 2) Best quality for future zooms.
Simple fit, performance less critical Scale to Frame Size (Method 3) Simple fit, good for standard use.

By utilizing these methods within the Effect Controls panel or via the right-click menu, you can effectively fit your video clips to your Premiere Pro sequence screen, handling various resolutions and aspect ratios.

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