How to change the size of my preview window

Bill-the-repair-guy wrote on 6/11/2024, 8:56 PM

So the preview window is a square. When I make a movie and i use PIP's or add jpg along with mp4's or gif's I resize them to all fit in the window. then when I make the movie and i play the movie on my PC which is 1920 x 1080 there is a fair amount of room around everything where there was not in the playback/ edit window. I am assuming it's something like 1080x 1080. I really tried to fix this on my own, i went into file>settings>movie, there was a setting I changed to 1920 x 1080 , did not affect the playback / edit screen

Comments

AAProds wrote on 6/11/2024, 9:22 PM

@Bill-the-repair-guy

Bill, you can drag the sides of the Preview monitor to reshape it as you desire. If you mouse-over the bottom right corner (just to the right of the lightning bolt) you'll get a 4-headed pointer that you can use to drag the monitor to suit.

Alternatively, right-click on the monitor itself and choose "Resolution Presets" or "other resolution" to manually set the size of the monitor.

If you want to change the frame size of the movie itself, you have to use the movie settings screen.

If you change the frame size in movie settings, make sure you also change the ratio. A 1920x1080 1:1 movie will come out exactly the same as a 1080x1080 1:1 movie: square.

After you change the movie settings, the result will be visible on the monitor: the actual movie area is jet-black, whereas the unused portion is dark grey.

Bill-the-repair-guy wrote on 6/18/2024, 8:17 AM

for some reason I cannot drag the sides of the preview window. i made these changes and they seem to have been the only way.

Gid wrote on 6/18/2024, 8:30 AM

@Bill-the-repair-guy

i play the movie on my PC which is 1920 x 1080 there is a fair amount of room around everything where there was not in the playback/ edit window.

Sounds like a mix of Movie aspect ratio vs Export ratio settings, or...
Post pictures of your Movie settings (i presume that is the pic above)
Post a picture of your export settings
Post a picture of the final exported video to explain this - 'a fair amount of room around everything'

To change the Preview you drag the windows on screen, &/or zoom out so it shows the black area that is the Movie size. Movie settings should auto match the Export settings but check them anyway.

johnebaker wrote on 6/18/2024, 8:49 AM

@Bill-the-repair-guy

As @Gid commented:

'Sounds like a mix of Movie aspect ratio vs Export ratio settings'

I agree looking at your project settings they appear to be incorrect 1920 x 1080 is not 2:1 Aspect ratio, it is 16:9 and will result in black bars, left and right in the preview monitor as @AAProds mentioned previously and on export as shown below - note in Movie Studio I have changed the background colour of the object on the timeline to blue to clearly indicate the result.

Export:

In program:

John EB

Gid wrote on 6/18/2024, 9:27 AM

@Bill-the-repair-guy This is why as many pictures as poss is needed -

then when I make the movie and i play the movie on my PC which is 1920 x 1080 there is a fair amount of room around everything where there was not in the playback/ edit window

A 1080 x 1080 movie won't look like it does in the Magix Preview window unless you have the media player set to adjust to the media size,

This is a 1080 x 1080 clip on my screen

Gid wrote on 6/19/2024, 5:16 AM

@Bill-the-repair-guy You've created another post about getting 'lags / freezes during playback', & you've posted the same pic as on here. - @johnebaker wrote - 'your project settings they appear to be incorrect 1920 x 1080 is not 2:1 Aspect ratio, it is 16:9'

You should follow up on this post because there's something wrong with the way your Movie etc is set up, I'm not saying this is the reason for your poor playback but you need to sort out the basics before you can determine why you're getting poor playback.