cropping movie to vertical format?

I have some HD 1920×1080 footage from a Canon HF10 camera that I need to edit together and output as a portrait shaped movie for a website. (The content at the sides of the movie are not needed - its just empty space that I want to crop off).

Proportions wise, the final movie needs to be about 1080 high x 600 wide (although the actual size will be smaller). However I can't see how to crop the final movie in FCP. I have been changing the 'sequence presets' in 'Audio / video settings' and I seem to be able to set a size of 1080 high x 600 wide, but the canvas window still shows a horizontal shape movie. I tried changing the 'capture presets' but that didn't work either.

What do I need to do?

thanks

Steve

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.3)

Posted on Jan 22, 2009 12:12 PM

19 replies

Jan 23, 2009 7:50 AM in response to RedTruck

following on from Red;

if you open the preview window (command 3), and change the preview image to the clip you are working on, (the default is test image)you can drag the vertical red guides to where on the image you want.

Then if you need to set exact pixels, use the Geometry settings for numerical control.

SPDB Author

Level 1

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Jan 23, 2009 9:29 AM in response to Gary Scotland

Thanks Gary and Red. I think that is the answer I need, but I have spent today playing with CS3 extended and I am impressed with how easy it is to work with movie files, although I'm struggling with controlling the sound track in it. Overall I think the final result will be better if I can do the whole thing in FCP.

Jan 23, 2009 9:48 AM in response to J S Langham

Just wanted to report back. Changing the frame size in FCP does work for me (a/v settings>sequence settings>and make a new sequence preset).
You need to select custom from the drop down to the side of the frame size fields but other than that it should all be obvious, just use the appropriate codec and pixel aspect for your footage. If I try to enter a custom frame size without changing the drop down to custom I get an error message informing me that the aspect ratio is constrained anyway.

As has been said already, you can also do it in compressor using the geometry tab. Again make sure that you have the correct pixel aspect selected and then just calculate the frame size from the crop values you've used.

SPDB wrote:
I seem to be able to set a size of 1080 high x 600 wide,

Just checking, but you know that the fields in the seq setting window are width then height not height then width? So 600 x 1080.

SPDB Author

Level 1

0 points

Jan 23, 2009 11:38 AM in response to J S Langham

Thanks for taking the time to check JS. Come monday I'll give both that method and the compressor method a try.

Steve

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cropping movie to vertical format?