Craft15 Jul 20264 min read
Why the editor previews the recording, not the result
Auto-reframe is a window on a wider frame. Showing the output hides the only thing worth checking.
The obvious build of a reframing editor shows you the vertical clip, because the vertical clip is what you are making. We built that first. It is worse, and the reason is that the vertical clip is the one thing in the editor that cannot tell you whether the crop is right.
If the speaker is at the edge of the window, the output looks fine right up until they move. If a second person is just outside it, the output gives you no way to know they were ever there.
One frame, with a window on it
So the preview shows the recording at its original width, with the crop drawn on it, using auto-reframe's own arithmetic rather than an approximation of it. A 9:16 window on a 16:9 frame is 31.6 per cent of its width, and that is the number the picture uses.
The consequence is that every reframe control visibly moves the window rather than mysteriously changing the picture, and the tracking box sits on the person it is tracking rather than on the result of tracking them.
The output is what you are making. The source is what you are deciding about.