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Resolution changes in imovie

Today i wanted to edit some vids but i came to a problem. I filmed some stuff with my iphone and edited it with imovie. When i exported the edited video, the resolution of my video was still the same but on the sides covered with black (look at the picture). Because of that i cant use i on social media. Can somebody help me fixing this. greetings Louis

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Apr 27, 2021 11:44 AM

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Posted on Apr 27, 2021 12:44 PM

It looks like you recorded your videos while holding your iPhone in the vertical position. When you do that the video will import into iMovie in a vertical 9:16 aspect ratio. iMovie's screen has a horizontal 16:9 aspect ratio and therefore black bars are inserted on each side of the 9:16 video to make it fit the 16:9 screen. There is no way to change the iMovie screen dimension.


However, you can easily fix the problem with a workaround. You rotate the clip sideways. Share it out. Open it in QuickTimePlayer and rotate it right side up again. Then save. No more black bars.


In more detail: Put the vertical clip into the iMovie project timeline. Click on it to select it. Then click on the crop icon (the one that looks like intersecting angles) in the tool bar at the top and to the right of your screen. In the controls that appear, click on the rotate control (the little tilted box with the rotate arrow next to it). Click on the rotate box to rotate the clip sideways. Then click on the blue reset button to the right of the screen to apply the rotatation. Then share out the clip to your desktop. Open it in QuickTimePlayer. Do Edit/Rotate to rotate the clip right side up. Then save to desktop. That will eliminate the black bars.


-- Rich



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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 27, 2021 12:44 PM in response to louisho29

It looks like you recorded your videos while holding your iPhone in the vertical position. When you do that the video will import into iMovie in a vertical 9:16 aspect ratio. iMovie's screen has a horizontal 16:9 aspect ratio and therefore black bars are inserted on each side of the 9:16 video to make it fit the 16:9 screen. There is no way to change the iMovie screen dimension.


However, you can easily fix the problem with a workaround. You rotate the clip sideways. Share it out. Open it in QuickTimePlayer and rotate it right side up again. Then save. No more black bars.


In more detail: Put the vertical clip into the iMovie project timeline. Click on it to select it. Then click on the crop icon (the one that looks like intersecting angles) in the tool bar at the top and to the right of your screen. In the controls that appear, click on the rotate control (the little tilted box with the rotate arrow next to it). Click on the rotate box to rotate the clip sideways. Then click on the blue reset button to the right of the screen to apply the rotatation. Then share out the clip to your desktop. Open it in QuickTimePlayer. Do Edit/Rotate to rotate the clip right side up. Then save to desktop. That will eliminate the black bars.


-- Rich



Apr 28, 2021 8:22 AM in response to louisho29

You are welcome.



As an added note: If your project contains all vertical videos you can rotate them as a batch and then share out the project with all the sideways videos and then open it in QuickTimePlayer and rotate the shared movie so that it is right side up.


You can rotate the video and still clips as a batch by using the Paste Adjustments feature. So, rotate the first clip. Then select it and do an Edit/Copy. Then select all of the other clips as a batch. Then do Edit/Paste Adjustments/Crop. That will paste your rotated crop adjustment into all of the other clips.


-- Rich

Resolution changes in imovie

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