Cropping clips in iMovie split screen overlay

O.K. You'll need to crop out the unwanted parts of the videos. That is, on one clip you crop out the left side and on the other clip you crop out the right side so that both clips contain only their focus points and not the extraneous frames. You can't do the cropping in iMovie but you can do it in Quicktime Player, and then import the cropped vids into iMovie for your split screen overlay.

Work with duplicate clips so you preserve your originals. Open the duplicated clip #1 in in Quicktime Player so that its screen displays (but don't play the vid). Then, in the Quicktime menu, do a File/New Screen Recording. A little box will pop up with a red dot in it. Click on the dot. Instructions will pop up giving you the option to drag-select the portion of the movie's screen that you want to play, excluding the rest. So, if you want to play the left screen portion of the vid and exclude the rest, drag-select the left screen portion. A box will pop up that says "Start Recording". Click on that, and then click on the play button of your movie. Your movie will start to play, but only the left portion that you selected will be recorded. When you want to stop, click on the little stop icon in the menu bar at the top of your screen (the one that is a small circle with a black square in it. Then exit out of your movie. Then save the cropped movie that remains on your screen. Do the same procedure with your other clip, only this time selecting the right side to play. Then drag both clips into iMovie and use the split screen feature and you should be good to go.

-- Rich

Here's what I get using the stills that you posted. It should work the same for vids. But maybe this isn't what you want. I cropped each still in half. I think I had to flip one horizontally to make it work.

-- Rich

JIm,

Using Ken Burns should work. I didn't think of that. Haven't tried it myself since I don't have suitable clips handy.

-- Rich

Hi,

I am having trouble envisioning what you are saying. You might get more responses if you would post screen shots.

For conceptual purposes, I am envisioning a landscape with a tree on the left and a boulder on the right. You have a video of the tree and a video of the rock. You want to create a split screen so that the tree is on the right and the rock is on the left. Is that conceptually correct? If so, what do you mean when you say "it always puts the focus on the center".

-- Rich

From Rich839:

Cropping should make a difference with either method because you would be changing the center point. Have you tried it?

-- Rich

O.K. I'll go with your findings since I don't have suitable clips to test.

It might be simpler to use Ken Burns on each clip and overlap the start and end rectangles over the area you want as the focus. Assuming I understand what the OP is after.