Hello,

I have a scene where I have a background clip I want to use and then
have 4 1/4-screen slide-ins from top to bottom that each highlight an
element of the background clip. I figure I would use AE for the
slide-in's and render w/an alpha channel, with Premiere Pro holding
the background clip.

So, for the 1/4-screen slices, I want the image in each size to be the
same size relative to each other, as well as have the focal part of
the image to be the same distance from the top of the screen. I
really hope this makes sense so far. :-)

Anyway, my original plan was to use a rectangular mask to obtain the
1/4-slice portion I wanted to use, and the shrink down each slice
until it matched the relative size of the other slices. Obviously,
this leaves a gap above/below the resized slice. I had hoped to be
able to use the clone stamp to paint areas from one slice that were
similar onto the other slices. Then I realized I had to be working
with the actual layer to be able to clone, so I did that. But
apparently since I shrunk the size, it means the canvas is shrunk
right along with it. I had hoped to be that the canvas size would be
fixed and I would be painting on the canvas, and not limited by the
fact that I shrunk the clip.

So, basically what I'm in the process of doing is that I made a
composition with two of the same clip in it. I've shrunk one image to
the size I want, then shrunk the other image to match the size and
basically paste them together. Then I use the clone stamp to remove
the areas that overlap. I'll then use the composition and put that in
the main composition and shrink that to the size I want to be. Repeat
the process for each slice.

What I want to know is whether this is the best, most straightforward
approach to doing this or is there a better way?

I had thought about using Photoshop to capture a single frame and do
that, but I know it would look too static.

Thanks for any advice.

Steve