Insider Tips: Fix Premiere Pro MOGRT Rescaling Issues

Motion Graphics Templates in Premiere Pro can break spectacularly when you change the aspect ratio of your sequence. Why does this happen?

Unlike other graphics software, Premiere Pro treats each layer individually—even if it’s grouped with other layers—and layers are automatically scaled according to the frame width.

In the example above, the error was the result of frame height readjustment from 1080 to 1920 (1080/1920 ≈ 0.56). To avoid this, you must make sure that each layer in the graphic clip behaves the way you want by proper use of pinning and anchor point placement.

Each layer can be pinned to the frame, or to another layer. By default, each layer is pinned to all sides of the video frame, but we’ll change that.

Changing the pinning so that only the background layer is pinned to the video frame, and only to the lower left of it, and then pinning the text layers to the background layer is a good start.

Now the layers in the graphic clip will stay together—but they’re still scaled down. There’s no way to avoid this, but you can make sure that the anchor point of the background layer is in the lower left corner, and that the anchor point of the whole graphic is also in the same place, so the lower third doesn’t move out of frame or get cropped when you scale it up.

In the example above, we’re setting the anchor point of the graphic clip to the lower left edge of the background layer and then setting the Position to the same value. Dragging out a guide in the Program Monitor can help you determine the exact position value. In this case: Zero pixels horizontal, 985 pixels vertically.

As shown above, our graphic clip can now safely be scaled up to 178% in the 4×5 sequence (1920/1080 ≈ 1.78) so it’s the same size as it was in the 16×9 sequence. Why do we want that? It’s going to be watched on the same screen—a phone.

If you make MOGRTs from your graphics, you should always be deliberate when setting your anchor points and pinning.