I recently encountered an unusual issue when transitioning my project from version 5.2 to 5.3. Specifically, I noticed some peculiar behavior while rendering still images or animations in the Movie Render queue.
In my project, I had disabled the “constraint aspect ratio” option for my Cinematic Camera Actor.
I found the following information in the Changelog:
Changed the default aspect ratio constraint to maintain Y FOV since camera FOV is now always handled as horizontal FOV. If preserving the exact framing for a given window size is important, you can specify the old setting value (maintain X FOV) in DefaultEngine.ini.
However, even when I attempted to override the constraint axis in the camera/project settings/ini, it didn’t have any effect on my image, which still did not appear correctly.
What’s particularly perplexing is that both scenes (5.2 and 5.3 with the “constraint aspect ratio” option disabled) look identical in the viewport. The discrepancy only becomes apparent in the image rendered with Movie Render Queue.
Strangely, with the “constraint aspect ratio” option enabled, my image looks the same as in 5.2 (both for viewport and Movie Render Queue).
Is this behavior intentional or not? I’m especially concerned since it implies that I can’t disable the “constraint aspect ratio” and trust what I see in my viewport and can’t use 5.2 cameras in 5.3.
Has anyone else encountered this issue, or does anyone have any ideas on how to resolve it?
We had “Constrain Aspect Ratio” disabled for all cameras in our UE 5.2 Project. Then we ported the project to UE 5.3. Now the same camera shows different FOV (if rendered wih Movie Render Queue) and the new setting
seems unfortunately to have no effect at all.
So basically in UE 5.3 we have no way to reproduce the original camera view from UE 5.2 (at least in this particular case).
I’m encountering a similar issue—I upgraded a project from version 5.1 to 5.3, and it appears that the cameras remain unchanged. However, the Movie Render Queue interprets them differently, resulting in a completely different aspect ratio.
Could you please attempt to enable “Constraint asset ratio” and give it another shot? This step helped me restore the correct camera ratio, but now I’m struggling to eliminate the black bars. Any insights on how to address this issue?
Editing my previous comment to say that I managed to solve the issue for my project. I don’t know if this will work for you, but it’s worth a try. I go into more detail in this post here: Movie Render Queue output does not match Sequencer/Viewport
The gist is: On your Camera Component options tick “Constrain Aspect Ratio”, “Override Aspect Ratio Axis Constraint” and make sure “Maintain X-Axis FOV” is set on the “Aspect Ratio Axis Constraint” option. Then, under Crop Settings, select an aspect ratio that corresponds to whatever resolution your final image will have (1.77 (16:9) for a 1920 x 1080, for instance). Render with MRQ as you usually would, and the final image should match the preview.
Was this ever fixed in UE 5.4? Even if users have managed to solve the problem mentioned in this thread, the overall issue of how “Constrain Aspect Ratio” behaves is still a problem in other use cases. For example, activate “Can Blend” on your Camera Cuts track and create a small blend at the end of the track. Then, with Constrain Aspect Ratio and Override Aspect Ratio Axis Constraint" set to OFF, play the Level Sequence. You will see a camera jump. Turn “Constrain Aspect Ratio” back to ON and the camera jump disappears. However, because the aspect ratios between the Cine Camera and gameplay Camera are different, you will see an annoying black bar expansion.
In case anybody ever runs into this issue, the solution that seems to work for camera blending is:
Constrain Aspect Ratio = OFF
Override Aspect Ratio Axis Constraint = ON
Aspect Ratio Axis Constraint = Maintain Y-Axis FOV
