Crop multiple clips from go-pro, is it possible or should I give up?

[xavier]

Hi,

I’m failing at editing very simple montage of underwater footage.

I don’t know if it’s me that don’t get the workflow or I’m hitting bugs or… please help me figure out how to do a simple:

squid are aliens

last night, I went diving and saw a few tiny squids, the biggest was probably 4 cm.
I’m trying to

1. load 3 small videos
2. cut to the “good part” (eg keep around 5 to 10 seconds of each)
3. crop and zoom (it’s mostly black videos with the wee one in the middle)

4. chain these and generate a vertical video (for the phone)

all the videos are 3840 × 2160 in H.265 @ 25hz

My key need here is to be able to choose which part of that giant video I need to keep, gopros are wide angles with most of the frame being uninteresting, I’d want to crop and keep only the good part of the 3840x2160

I’d like to get the final video at 1080 x 1920 (vertical framing) containing the good part of the 3840x2160. I don’t want to “real” zoom, just crop.

What I’m doing so far

1. I created 3 tracks and put each clip on their own separate track
2. cropped out the bits I don’t want and aligned them
   
   
3. applied a crop rectangle effect (putting the size I want)
   
   

This is where it falls apart. What I would do with a single video is to click on “apply to source”, and accept to change the video format

that works fine and generates the cropped+zoomed video

however here, it seems to go completely banana and somewhat apply some kind of reframing/cropping/something to the other tracks and… I don’t know what’s going on, but I need to trash the project, none of the other tracks seems to be usable anymore

What am I missing? is this possible to crop and take only 1080x1920 rectangles from each of the clips and put them together into one 1080x1920 video? do I need to save each of the clips as separate videos and do a final montage?

I’d really like to use an opensource video editor, is this possible for what I want to do?

Advises more than welcome

X+

Shotcut version 24.11.17
ubuntu

[shotcut]

Use Reframe

Reframe Output Video Filter

Reframe or reframing is a way to crop a video or editing project in order to export it to a different aspect ratio. For example, you made a video project in 16:9 aspect ratio landscape/horizontal orientation but now want to make a 9:16 portrait/vertical orientation video for social media. Other forms of cropping are used primarily within a composition to remove bad edges (Crop: Source), zoom in to fill the frame (Size, Position & Rotate), add colored borders (Crop: Rectangle), or clip an overlay…

[shotcut]

Alternatively, set the video mode to a vertical one and use the Size Position & Rotate filter to each clip independently. Yes, you will need to zoom in because the default tries to fit the entire source video into the output rectangle. I know you don’t want “real zoom,” but try not think so hard about how it is happening and more about getting things framed the way you want.

[brian]

@shotcut

Alternatively, set the video mode to a vertical one and use the Size Position & Rotate filter to each clip independently.

This is also my recommendation. You are more likely to get expected results if the preview display matches what you plan to export.

[xavier]

@shotcut

I know you don’t want “real zoom,”

I tried the Size position & rotate, and chose “fit”

the problem I have is that I’m trying first to

1. put 1020 x 1080
2. adjust position until the object is centered
3. adjust the zoom

and the problem is that if I touch the zoom factor, it’s controlling the position and size parameters.

What’s the workflow you use ? Is it possible to use it as the crop rectangle effect? ie drag around what you want and then adjust the zoom?