Adapting videos to various screens has been a challenge ever since movies shot for wide theater screens were first broadcast on square TVs. We’ve now got devices like tablets and smartphones added to the mix, so Adobe has created an AI-powered plugin that can automatically prep a video for any screen while ensuring the most important parts are always in frame.
Auto Reframe, as Adobe has called the new tool, will be available for Premiere, the company’s video editing application, sometime later this year and will take advantage of the company’s cloud-based AI and machine learning-powered automation software, Adobe Sensei. Dabbling with AI software usually requires a fairly robust understanding of software and computer science, but Auto Reframe is going to be an easy to use plugin that users can simply drop into their editing timelines. It will analyze the footage, and then create multiple versions in 16:9 widescreen, 1:1 square, and 9:16 vertical aspect ratios so the final result can be played on almost any device.
In addition, to ensure the video’s subject matter remains properly in frame, the plugin will also shrink and reposition any titling created in Adobe Premiere to fit within the various dimensions. No software tool is infallible however, so if the automatic pan and scan adjustments made by Auto Reframe don’t produce results users are satisfied with, manual adjustments and tweaks can be made.
For professionals churning out content that could end up online or broadcast to millions, Auto Reframe sounds like it will help alleviate at least a few headaches during post-production. But it’s also a tool that every smartphone should include by default for those times when friends and family send you a video annoyingly filmed in portrait mode and you’d rather enjoy it widescreen without suffering through giant black bars appearing on either side of your screen. Conversely, if the vertical video phenomenon continues its march to prominence, we could see this tool used for evil.