Fade to photos with different aspect ratio

Help/How To
1

Hello,

I’m editing a video in 16:9 format. In between some clips, I want to insert still photos in 4:3 format. And then there should be a cross-fade between video and photo on both ends. Where there’s two photos in a row, I also need a cross-fade between them.

Unfortunately the fade looks quite ugly because it’s not really fading all parts. In the centre 4:3 part, the photo fades in, gradually replacing the video. But in the outer bars (left and right), nothing changes and then the video suddenly disappears into black. It seems like the cross-fade “dissolve” cannot handle different aspect ratios. It might even be poorly implemented and it only shows in this situation.

How can I fix this?

I could live with the black left and right bars, as there’s nothing to crop in the photos. I could also take a blurred copy of the photo in the background, scaled so that it fills the frame – like the effect many TV shows use when presenting 4:3 or portrait content in a 16:9 format.

2

Try adding a black clip below the transitions.

Yes, adding a Blur: Pad filter to your 4:3 images is also an option.

3

If you would be open to adding one additional layer, you could do a “manual” cross-fade. Literally fade one out as the other fades in.

The way I did it here, I made sure the smaller one was on the bottom, so the black bars would fade in with it. Then, the “fade” on the bottom layer must extend past when the top layer disappears. If I didn’t do this, the top layer wouldn’t fade out all the way for some reason? Who knows.

This isn’t an actual solution, but it’s a temporary workaround that works almost as well. Hopefully this gets fixed sometime soon (It’s not an extremely niche problem either).