Using Videos with Unusual Aspect Ratios

[Kenten]

Hi, I am trying to make a video with myself playing piano and some gameplay footage. I want the lower 20% of the screen to be my piano footage, and the upper 80% to be the gameplay footage. I have already used Handbrake to crop my piano clip from its original 16:9 to a much narrower aspect ratio so you only see the keyboard. But when I import this cropped clip into Reaper, it stretches the image back to 16:9. The first attached image is when I play back the cropped video in VLC, that's what it should look like. The second image is what the video looks like in Reaper's video window.

How can I get Reaper to maintain the source aspect ratio so I can use the Image Overlay video preset to put the piano footage on top of the game footage?

[Stella645]

Check Project Settings/Video. Always resize video source.

This video from Jon T (EpicSounds) may also be helpful for the compositing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5ur_JDbqQM

[Kenten]

"Always resize video sources to preferred video size" is already unchecked. And the video presets that Jon talks about in that video are not free.

[Stella645]

Ah....didn't realise that was a paid course.

If aspect ratio on import is set correctly it must be the preserve aspect in video window options??