Input image strip without stretching to fit output frame

When you add an image strip to the Video Sequence Editor, it stretches/shrinks your image to fit the full output frame.

How can I add an image at its original resolution? For example, if I add a 60x60 pixel image, it should appear very small in the final 1080p render.

• do you want it to scale uniformly? Not that in that case clipping would occur or you would still have some empty space. – Vader Apr 12 '14 at 11:22
• @Vader, right, I want a small image to have empty space around it (it will be set to Alpha Over and placed on top of background image). I want it to preserve the original aspect ratio of the image. – Garrett Apr 12 '14 at 20:11

The default behaviour of an image strip added to the VSE is to scale to the render resolution set for the blend file. To change this behaviour in the way you have specified; enable "Image Offset" in the Strip Input panel on the properties bar for the selected image sequence, then use the X and Y value inputs to position the image within the output image space. You also want to set the blend type to "Alpha Over" so that the underlying strip is visible.

• This works for the final render! But in the composite preview window things still look wrong. Let's hope they sort out this mess in a future version of blender. – Mutant Bob Apr 17 '14 at 16:12
• It look like this issue @MutantBob is revering to is due to the "Proxy Render Size". This did work for me when I did not need the cache-proxy-trick and now with the cache it causes the problems. Now the answer of leon-cheung did work for me in the cache-situation. – gkephorus May 16 '20 at 9:57

This is fairly easy:

• Select the imported image/strip, then Add > Effect Strip > Transform;
• Select the newly added Transform strip, go to the N panel, set X/Y scale by following this rule: original_res/scene_res.

For example, you current scene dimension is 1280x720, want to add a 60x60 image, you can type in 60/1280 for X scale, then Blender will calculate the scale ratio for you. Then type 60/720 for Y scale. Voila.

• @Garrett, ah, right. Thanks for fixing the silly typo for me. :) – Leon Cheung Apr 14 '14 at 2:09
• Thanks a lot, I've just been fighting the same issue and hit my head on the desk as to why Blender would always auto-crop or square up the image when I'm rotating it by 90 deg (portrait footage for a panorama stitching) and this made it finally return to the proper ratio just rotated. I don't get why it's not doing this by default :< – BloodyRain2k May 11 '17 at 9:26
• For me the scene dimension was 1920x1080, and the mobile movie strip was 720x1280. For this, just applying the rule original_res / scene_res only for X was sufficient. That is, 720 / 1920 was enough. Applying to the Y cropped the top and bottom of the strip a bit. Therefore, I did not do 1280/1080. – Antony Nov 3 '20 at 10:21

The easiest way is to use VSE Transform tool which does exactly what you need. When you apply Trasnform to your strip (simply by pressing T) it automatically scales to keep aspect ratio of input image/video. So you don't have to do any manual calculations.

Then it gets even better, because you can rotate, scale and move simply by clicking in preview window so you get instant feedback on what you've changed.

• @Garrett: You can simply click on the image in preview, press S and scale it as you like. Then press G and move it as you like. Though it won't help you if you want to get exactly 60x60px in the final render (you still have to do the math for that). – elmo Apr 14 '14 at 8:24