Video Scaling on Timeline WHY???

[sking22]

I drag a clip into the preview box (left screen box) and it looks fine. I drag it to the timeline and when I see it in the preview window (right screen box) it's blown up and cropped. The whole video is there but I have to resize it manually to get the whole shot. Any ideas why? I checked the settings but have no idea.

For a more detailed example, I have a shot of a guy with a lot of white space around him in the preview (this is correct). Once on the timeline it blows up and it's just his face in the shot. If I click on the preview I can grab the corners and resize down so I get my white space back. WHERE IS THE DARN SETTING?

Thanks!

 

[Akribie]

It sounds like your source material is much larger than the frame size for your timeline.

I assume you are using one of the Premiere Pro versions. Scale to Frame Size (with variations in the exact words) is a tick box in General Preferences. When ticked, it will fit material to the frame size of the timeline, but you can always still use Motion to re-scale later if you wish because it is a non-destructive scaling.