Why do images look cropped in videos?

Are you wondering why images displayed in Video Slideshows appear to crop out the top and bottom of the image?

What's going on?

It's totally normal for videos to do this, it's just the way they are! It's because of two things; aspect ratio and panning.

What is aspect ratio?

It’s the ratio between to the width of a frame compared to the hight. Photos commonly have an aspect ratio of around 3:2, while a video is 16:9.

In other words, videos are wider and a more elongated rectangle than photos.

What about panning motion?

Panning is the term for the slow movement across an image e.g. from left to right or vise-versa.

It's panning that injects the illusion of motion into the images and in order to achieve this, we need to be a little 'zoomed in' to the shot to achieve this effect.

What is cropped out of the video?

The top and bottom of the image will be slightly cropped out when displayed in a video. It’s not loads, but it’s important to be aware of this.