Content-Aware Scaling

Content-Aware Scaling - sometimes known as Seam Carving - is a technique where a piece of footage is scaled in respect to the content. It is most commonly done in Photoshop through its built in features, however this can be (with difficulty) replicated in other editors as well.

Usage

The intended use of Content-Aware Scaling is to "scale up" the "important" parts of the frame to fill the whole area. For example, if you took a picture of a house but it only takes up a third of the screen (you want it at least half), the house would be scaled up and everything else would be squashed out of it. At smaller levels this works fine, but when set to the extreme you can create incredibly distorted images!

Using Photoshop

To help with this "side effect", a script exists by Neil Cicierega which applies the fill to each layer of your current project. You can also keyframe to make the scale "worse" over time. Because this is based on layers, anything that can be imported as such into Photoshop will work. Then, just export however you see fit.