How to Create an Easy Premiere Pro Picture in Picture

Learn Adobe Premiere Pro picture in picture effect. Learn to manipulate the picture and picture separately from the main clip in your sequence.

Adobe Premiere Pro Picture in Picture Effect

Today I’m going to be showing you how to do picture in picture as well as how to do picture in picture manipulation in Adobe Premiere Pro. I’m going to begin by adding this video clip of the inside of an airplane with passengers in flight. This will be my main clip or base layer.

Depending on your clip, you may need to reposition the main clip over in advance so that you have more room for the smaller picture in picture. Or keyframe the main clip over just before bringing in the premiere pro picture and picture for my clip here,

I’m just going to leave it positioned as it is, but I am going to have to scale it down since it is a 4K clip and the sequence I created is a 1080P. So if I hit shift+five that will bring up my effects control tab. And now I’m going to come up here to scale and change it to 50.

So now I want to bring in the clip that will be used as the premiere pro picture in picture or the top layer, and place it two layers above the base layer. So that will be this clip here of the plane taking off. So now the top layer is covering my base layer, let’s size it down so we can get an idea of how it’s going to look.

So again shift+five if I click on motion I could hold the shift down, grab these ends here and I can scale it down like that. Or I can just come up to scale and scale it, something down like this just to get an idea. Around 34% and I can click and move this around. Just get an idea of how it looks. And I’m just going to play this back just so you see now.

How to Add a Zoom Effect to Picture in Picture

Just to make it interesting, let’s make a zoom effect on the premiere pro picture in picture video. We’re not going to be doing a zoom on the picture in picture window itself like this. We’re actually going to be doing a zoom on the video inside the picture in picture.

What we’re going to be able to do is manipulate this top layer. To do that, we’re going to right click on this top layer and go to nest. And we can call this something like picture in picture and say OK. Now what we have is the ability to control both the video itself and in the container of the video itself.

And so now I’m going to double click on our next video and we need to make a smaller video the same size as the large video. So again shift+5 and here is my effects control tab and I’m just going to click. And reset the scale parameter. And the position parameter.

So now going back to main sequence with the top layer or the nested layer highlighted. I can come over here to my effects tab and scale down my picture in picture. And adjust where I believe I want it. And resize it to something like that. And now if I want to add my zoom effect I will go into my nested layer. And I will put my play head their, turn on the scale with my play head up somewhere like that. Change the scale to something like that.

Go back into my main sequence here. Now when we play it back to zoom will happen, but it will stay within its box. Now we have the ability to change both the video itself and the container of video. The nested layer is the container, and the video is the thing inside the container.

How to Add More Clips to a Nested Layer

Now let’s add some more clips to the nested clip or the top layer. Here I’m going to double click. And we’re going to add in this clip here, and if you need to do any resizing, you would do that right here in the nested clip. and I’m going to add in this clip here and I just need to video. I don’t need the audio.

This clip here I need to scale it down shift+5 and I’ll put this to 50. OK so all we need to do is go back to the main sequence and I know we’re going to need to extend this and play it back. And I think I’ll trim this right here.

So again, if I go back and double click on the nested layer, here is where you would do all the resizing of the clips as well as any of the effects. I’m going to highlight the nested layer and I think I’m going to scale this down just a little bit. Something like that.

How to Add a Drop Shadow to a Picture in Picture

So now to make a clear distinction between the normal clip and the smaller clip. We’re going to add a solid border around the smaller video layer. So I’m going to come up here to the pen tool and hold down option and get the rectangle. So this is where I’m going to draw around the picture in picture window and create a rectangle that serves as a border. And come down here to this graphic layer right here that it created an move that below picture in picture.

And now I can change the size of that border and I’m going to make sure that this graphic layer is the same size as everything on the timeline. And I want to change the color to use the color picker here and change that to white, say OK. And now I’m going to select the nested layer, the premiere pro picture in picture layer, and the graphic layer. If I click on that and nest them again and I’ll call it PIP 2.

And let’s do something else with this border. At the nested premiere pro picture in picture layer selected, I’m going to hit Shift 7 just going to bring up my effects. And I’m going to add a drop shadow, search for drop. And drop this onto my nested layer and hit shift+5. And down here is my drop shadow parameters going to put my opacity to 100 leave the direction there, distance something like 41. And softness 86.

There’s a little bit of a drop shadow, and again I could come up to the scale and change the whole scale of the window. And we’ll play it back. Here’s the zoom. Fly Over. All done in the one premiere pro picture in picture window. So we’ve created a picture in picture. We manipulated the video inside with a zoom effect.

See my previous blog article here 👉 Full Frame vs Crop Sensor – Which One Will You Choose?

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