How to Extend a Video in Photoshop with Generative Fill, ai Cinemagraph

Colin Smith

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This tutorial shows you how to extend a video to change its shape with Generative Fill in Photoshop.

Most video are horizontal. Sometimes you want to change a horizontal video to vertical or to square for social media such as Instagram reel, Youtube shorts or tie Tok. Or maybe you just want to recompose a video and need to extend the edges. Here is how.

On the left is before, on the right is after. Its generative fill, but this is working on a video in Photoshop.

Aerial drone video frame of a river dam in a city with a black empty area below  Same aerial dam video extended downward with Generative Fill adding buildings and river

Choose file>Open and choose your video, it will open in Photoshop and the timeline will appear. (Not all video formats are supported, but .mov H.264 is the most commonly used and supported format.)

For more on Photoshop and video check out this tutorial 

Photoshop with Window > Timeline and the video clip outlined in the Timeline panel

If you look in the layers panel, you will see a video group. Everything in this video group will be on a single layer on the timeline. You will see why you need to know this soon.

Layers panel with the video Layer 1 inside Video Group 1 outlined

Lets extend the canvas.

Choose the crop tool

Crop tool icon outlined in red in the Photoshop toolbar

Drag out the crop to extend the top or bottom. Tip: Find an edge that doesn’t have movement, or shoot a photo that only has movement in the middle. This technique won’t work properly on a video that has edge to edge movement.

Crop extended below the aerial dam video, leaving a transparent area

Press enter to apply the crop. We have a 1:1 square crop here.

Square 1:1 crop with the dam video on top and transparent canvas below

Grab the rectangular marquee selection tool

Rectangular Marquee tool icon in the Photoshop toolbar

Drag over the blank area, making sure to overlap the existing pixels a little bit.

Marquee selection over the blank area, overlapping the bottom of the video

Choose Generative fill

Generative Fill button on the Photoshop contextual task bar

Enter text for what you want to fill the blank layer with and then press generate

Prompt bird's eye view of a modern metropolis typed in Generative Fill

Because we are in the Video group in the layers panel, you will notice the generated layer (in purple) is added at the end of the timeline, rather than stacked on top of the video

Generative Layer 1 added as a purple clip at the end of the timeline after the video

Grab the Generated layer and drag it above the Video group in the Layers panel.

Dragging Generative Layer 1 above Video Group 1 in the Layers panel

 

Layers panel with Generative Layer 1 above Video Group 1

Drag the clip to the beginning of the timeline.

Generative Layer 1 clip at the start of the timeline above the video clip

Drag the end of the generated layer in the timeline, so it’s the same duration as the video.

Generative layer clip stretched to the same duration as the video

You can see its now extended.

Choose your favorite out of the variations (How to use Generative Fill in Photoshop)

Generative Layer variations in Properties with the metropolis prompt

Press the spacebar for the video to play. Notice how convincing this is. We have essentially created a Cinemagraph

Extended aerial dam video with a generated river and buildings, a cinemagraph

Exporting the video

Once you have created this, you can save it as a PSD and everything will be as it was when you reopen the file. To share or distribute the result, it needs to be encoded as a video.

In Photoshop choose File>Export>Render Video

Use the default format or H.264

If you use the high quality preset, the video will render using the current dimensions.

Render Video dialog with H.264 format and the High Quality preset

You can choose different options from presets if you want to share the video on a specific platform, as it contains YouTube presets and more.

To learn more about video in Photoshop, I have created 2 courses

Video In Photoshop (Also available as a book from Peachpit press, authored by myself, Colin Smith)

Making Movies In photoshop

Render Video preset menu with options for phones, tablets and HD formats

Check out the video above to see this in action.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful, browse 100s more here at the CAFE

See ya,

Colin

Also follow me on Instagram, Tik Tik and Twitter.  for shorts and reels.

My new course on Generative Fill in Photoshop: https://photoshopcafe.com/shop/generative-fill-in-photoshop-introduction-course/

Generative Fill in Photoshop course banner by Colin Smith


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