Cheap & easy fan videos for Windows, using Ulead VideoStudio
Adjusting frame dimensions of an individual clip:
As you can read on this page about aspect ratio (link opens to new window) on the Mac Vidding tutorial, incorrect aspect ratio is a major pet peeve of mine. I hope some of the illustrations on the tutorial will demonstrate why it looks so bad.
A major culprit for aspect ratio problems is when you are using clips from several different sources (different DVDs, or downloaded clips). Each clip may have different aspect ratio. If you combine them together into one video, you'll end up with inconsistent aspect ratio (this drives me particularly nuts, as you can read at the bottom of the above linked page).
Fortunately, VideoStudio does allow for some adjustment of aspect ratio. It is not perfect, and it can (again) get a bit "fiddley" and require several tries to get right, but it does usually work.
A view of the "Distort Clip" pane in Video Studio 9 SE DVD. Click on image to see a full-screen version.
- In the timeline, highlight the clip you want to adjust. Then, in the upper-left corner, click on the "Attribute" tab (circled in red above).
- Check the "Distort clip" box. Your clip will get a frame around it, with "handlebars" (circled in purple).
- Drag the top, bottom or side center bars with your mouse to stretch out, lengthen or shorten the dimensions of a clip which is too "squished" or "squashed." Take care, however—when you switch back to your Timeline mode, the clip will sometimes jump back to looking the way it did before. But in reality, usually the adjustment has actually stuck.
- Save the finished file and view the video to see if your alternations to the clip are sufficient. (Sometimes it requires several tries to get it right—like I said, "fiddley.")
If you are not very discerning about frame dimensions, or rather, if you don't usually notice distortions of frame dimensions (and think I'm a crazy, overly picky person to dwell on them so much!), then trying to adjust a clip's aspect ratio is probably not something you should attempt to do—it might be that you don't have a picky enough "eye" for it. If possible, try to use video clips all from one source (one downloaded video file, or from the same ripped DVD). Getting clips from different sources could result in the aforementioned (and much villified) inconsistent aspect ratio, which looks really quite awful. If you don't have a keen enough "eye" to fix it properly, the inconsistency may still be present in the finished video.
Next up: How to export your finished video out of VideoStudio >>