Cropping iMovie Picture-In-Picture Overlays

Basic picture-in-picture overlays in iMovie need to stay the same width and height ratio as the project. But by cropping the clip in Project Media before you add it to the timeline, you can crop it as you wish.
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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can crop picture-in-picture video in iMovie on your Mac.
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 2000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/Patreon. There you could read more about it. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts. 
Now Picture-in-Picture is one of the most advanced techniques that you can use in iMovie to make your video look great. One problem with it seems to be that there is no way to crop the picture-in-picture video to be anything else but the same dimensions as the main video. In other words if your main video is 16 by 9 then your picture-in-picture video has got to be 16 by 9. So, for instance, here in iMovie I've got a blank project. Let's go into that. Let's say I want to go and add some video to the main timeline. I'm going to go to Photos here, under My Media, and I'm going to select All Photos and then I'm going to just select videos here. 
Then I'm going to add a video to the main Timeline. So I've got this main video. Let's say I want to add some picture-in-picture videos to it. I'm going to drag a file this time, another way to add video to your project, from the Finder into iMovie and just put it right here on the Timeline above the main timeline as the one layer that you're allowed to have in iMovie. This is called an Overlay. So you can see it is completely overlaying the video underneath it. I can change that from Cutaway, which just replaces the entire video under it, to picture-in--picture which appears as a small little video here on top of the main video. I can drag the blue dots here to resize it. I can drag it to move it anywhere I want. But the one thing I can't seem to do is Crop it. I want to crop the left and right here and make this more square, for instance. I can't seem to do it. It's going to be the same 16 by 9 ration as the rest of the video. 
If I hold the Shift Key down and drag one of the blue dots I can squeeze this like that. It's not going to create the effect I want. I don't want as squeeze the video. I want it to actually crop. There doesn't seem to be a way to do that. If you go here to the Crop Tool with this picture-in-picture video selected, you go from Fit to Crop to Fill, I can crop but it stays as the same ratio. No matter where I put the pointer it's always going to stay 16 by 9. So I can crop it like that as long as I keep that ratio. Ken Burns isn't going to help either. 
So to get this done let's start over again. First I'm going to bring in that main video there. I'm going to go to Photos and select that again. Instead of dragging it to the Timeline I'm going to do things the proper way and drag it into Project Media first. I'm also going to drag that other video from the Finder and drag it into here. I can also drag it right here. I'll add that to Project Media. I have not added anything to the Timeline yet. It doesn't matter where the videos come from. They can both come from Photos and they can both be dragged in from the Finder. I've got them in Project Media now. So I'm going to take this video and drag it onto the Main Timeline and it is there as before. This video I could take and drag in above this as picture-in-picture video. But the trick is to crop it before you bring it into the Timeline. So, I'm going to select it here. When I select it I get the yellow outline around it. I can now use these tools to work with this clip before I bring it into the Timeline. So for instance I can work with the colors and the levels. In this case I'm going to Crop it. Select that and now I've got a Crop button here. I can click the Crop button and I can crop the video. You can notice right away that the cropping works differently here. I can drag the sides or the corners and crop the video, like that. Then when I'm done I can click the checkmark there. Now you can see it is cropped here as a clip before it is in the Timeline. This is the main trick. 
So I'm going to take this and I'm going now to drag it into the Timeline above here as an overlay and drop it on top. I'm going to change it now to picture-on-picture and now I can see it is cropped like it is here. Sometimes it won't be because you do need to set one more thing. With the picture-in-picture video selected in the Timeline, not here but in the timeline, you want to go to Cropping Tools here. Now you get Fit, Crop to Fill, and Ken Burns. You want to make sure it is set, in this case, to Fit. If you have it set to Crop to Fill, then it is going to go back to that same 16 by 9 ratio. So that is an important thing.  If it wasn't working right away this is what you want to check. You want to take this and change it to Fit. Now that it is set to Fit it is going to be this cropped video here. I can select the overlay settings there. I can move it around. I can, you know, set the border, add a shadow, do all the other stuff. Change the effect here. You want to stick with Dissolve. Zoom doesn't work quite right but sometimes it's okay. If you crop it swab doesn't really work very well at all so you want to avoid that. I can position this where I want. I can resize it or keep the cropping if I resize it like that. Now I've got my cropped picture-in-picture video. 
If I go back here and select this and then go to Crop and then change the cropping, like this, click the checkmark like that and then I look back at the main timeline. Notice that it didn't change anything. It actually kept the cropping that was added originally. I'm going to shrink this in and I'm going to add it again like that. Notice how the cropping now is the new cropping. So I can change that to picture-in-picture and the new cropping is actually used for this other clip.
So it remembers the cropping at the moment it was added. You can't go and alter any existing one that is there. You have to go back, change the cropping, and re-add it. But this is useful. If you want to have the same video but cropped in different ways during your movie. 
Now this works for photos as well. Let's go back into the Photos Library here. I'm going to look at photos instead and let me pick an image like this one. I'll bring it in. This is just a regular photo. So I've added it here. If I try to do, you know, picture-in-picture here it won't let me crop it in any way. Cropping like this won't let me adjust it anything but 16 by 9. But if I get rid of it here, go back to the Project Media, select it in Project Media, go to Crop, click the crop button just like before and change the crop. Click the checkmark there. Then add this back Let's change to picture-in-picture. You can see it didn't seem to work. But remember that extra step. With this selected go to the Crop Tools and check to make sure it is set to Fit. Now click to checkmark. Now you can see it is cropped. So you've got to remember that extra step. Going in here with it selected in the Timeline and changing to Fit. 
It's tricky to do. You've got to remember the steps. Bring the photo or video into Project Media. Select it in Project Media. Crop it while it is in Project Media. Then add it to the Timeline as an overlay. Change the overlay to picture-in-picture. Then set its cropping as picture-in-picture to Fit. That's how to crop picture-in-picture video on iMovie. I'm using iMovie 10.4.2 here. I don't know if you go back to earlier versions if you can do this and it will work. But it definitely works in the latest version. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching. Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can crop picture-in-picture video in iMovie on your Mac.
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 2000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/Patreon. There you could read more about it. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts. 
Now Picture-in-Picture is one of the most advanced techniques that you can use in iMovie to make your video look great. One problem with it seems to be that there is no way to crop the picture-in-picture video to be anything else but the same dimensions as the main video. In other words if your main video is 16 by 9 then your picture-in-picture video has got to be 16 by 9. So, for instance, here in iMovie I've got a blank project. Let's go into that. Let's say I want to go and add some video to the main timeline. I'm going to go to Photos here, under My Media, and I'm going to select All Photos and then I'm going to just select videos here. 
Then I'm going to add a video to the main Timeline. So I've got this main video. Let's say I want to add some picture-in-picture videos to it. I'm going to drag a file this time, another way to add video to your project, from the Finder into iMovie and just put it right here on the Timeline above the main timeline as the one layer that you're allowed to have in iMovie. This is called an Overlay. So you can see it is completely overlaying the video underneath it. I can change that from Cutaway, which just replaces the entire video under it, to picture-in--picture which appears as a small little video here on top of the main video. I can drag the blue dots here to resize it. I can drag it to move it anywhere I want. But the one thing I can't seem to do is Crop it. I want to crop the left and right here and make this more square, for instance. I can't seem to do it. It's going to be the same 16 by 9 ration as the rest of the video. 
If I hold the Shift Key down and drag one of the blue dots I can squeeze this like that. It's not going to create the effect I want. I don't want as squeeze the video. I want it to actually crop. There doesn't seem to be a way to do that. If you go here to the Crop Tool with this picture-in-picture video selected, you go from Fit to Crop to Fill, I can crop but it stays as the same ratio. No matter where I put the pointer it's always going to stay 16 by 9. So I can crop it like that as long as I keep that ratio. Ken Burns isn't going to help either. 
So to get this done let's start over again. First I'm going to bring in that main video there. I'm going to go to Photos and select that again. Instead of dragging it to the Timeline I'm going to do things the proper way and drag it into Project Media first. I'm also going to drag that other video from the Finder and drag it into here. I can also drag it right here. I'll add that to Project Media. I have not added anything to the Timeline yet. It doesn't matter where the videos come from. They can both come from Photos and they can both be dragged in from the Finder. I've got them in Project Media now. So I'm going to take this video and drag it onto the Main Timeline and it is there as before. This video I could take and drag in above this as picture-in-picture video. But the trick is to crop it before you bring it into the Timeline. So, I'm going to select it here. When I select it I get the yellow outline around it. I can now use these tools to work with this clip before I bring it into the Timeline. So for instance I can work with the colors and the levels. In this case I'm going to Crop it. Select that and now I've got a Crop button here. I can click the Crop button and I can crop the video. You can notice right away that the cropping works differently here. I can drag the sides or the corners and crop the video, like that. Then when I'm done I can click the checkmark there. Now you can see it is cropped here as a clip before it is in the Timeline. This is the main trick. 
So I'm going to take this and I'm going now to drag it into the Timeline above here as an overlay and drop it on top. I'm going to change it now to picture-on-picture and now I can see it is cropped like it is here. Sometimes it won't be because you do need to set one more thing. With the picture-in-picture video selected in the Timeline, not here but in the timeline, you want to go to Cropping Tools here. Now you get Fit, Crop to Fill, and Ken Burns. You want to make sure it is set, in this case, to Fit. If you have it set to Crop to Fill, then it is going to go back to that same 16 by 9 ratio. So that is an important thing.  If it wasn't working right away this is what you want to check. You want to take this and change it to Fit. Now that it is set to Fit it is going to be this cropped video here. I can select the overlay settings there. I can move it around. I can, you know, set the border, add a shadow, do all the other stuff. Change the effect here. You want to stick with Dissolve. Zoom doesn't work quite right but sometimes it's okay. If you crop it swab doesn't really work very well at all so you want to avoid that. I can position this where I want. I can resize it or keep the cropping if I resize it like that. Now I've got my cropped picture-in-picture video. 
If I go back here and select this and then go to Crop and then change the cropping, like this, click the checkmark like that and then I look back at the main timeline. Notice that it didn't change anything. It actually kept the cropping that was added originally. I'm going to shrink this in and I'm going to add it again like that. Notice how the cropping now is the new cropping. So I can change that to picture-in-picture and the new cropping is actually used for this other clip.
So it remembers the cropping at the moment it was added. You can't go and alter any existing one that is there. You have to go back, change the cropping, and re-add it. But this is useful. If you want to have the same video but cropped in different ways during your movie. 
Now this works for photos as well. Let's go back into the Photos Library here. I'm going to look at photos instead and let me pick an image like this one. I'll bring it in. This is just a regular photo. So I've added it here. If I try to do, you know, picture-in-picture here it won't let me crop it in any way. Cropping like this won't let me adjust it anything but 16 by 9. But if I get rid of it here, go back to the Project Media, select it in Project Media, go to Crop, click the crop button just like before and change the crop. Click the checkmark there. Then add this back Let's change to picture-in-picture. You can see it didn't seem to work. But remember that extra step. With this selected go to the Crop Tools and check to make sure it is set to Fit. Now click to checkmark. Now you can see it is cropped. So you've got to remember that extra step. Going in here with it selected in the Timeline and changing to Fit. 
It's tricky to do. You've got to remember the steps. Bring the photo or video into Project Media. Select it in Project Media. Crop it while it is in Project Media. Then add it to the Timeline as an overlay. Change the overlay to picture-in-picture. Then set its cropping as picture-in-picture to Fit. That's how to crop picture-in-picture video on iMovie. I'm using iMovie 10.4.2 here. I don't know if you go back to earlier versions if you can do this and it will work. But it definitely works in the latest version. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
Comments: 2 Responses to “Cropping iMovie Picture-In-Picture Overlays”

Sheldon
6 months ago
Thanks bunches
Hiland
I thought you did a great job explaining the iMovie Picture-in-Picture overlays and cropping. I'll have to try this next time I'm feeling creative.
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Cropping iMovie Picture-In-Picture Overlays

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