Portrait ratio imovie

Can you clarify a bit? As I understand your post you have landscape clips that you want to crop and display in vertical mode. Is that correct? Post back if you mean something else.

To crop to any aspect ratio that you want, you must do that in the Project browser view, not in the timeline. So, click on the project's name under the Project Media item at the top of the sidebar. Select a clip in the Project browser pane that appears. Click on the crop tool in the tool bar above and to the right of the timeline (the one that looks like intersecting angles). That will cause a little Crop button to appear just above and to the left of the preview screen. Click on the crop button and an adjustment box will appear in the preciew screen. Drag the handles at the side and corners of the box to get the crop dimensions that you want. Then click on the blue reset button above and to the right on your screen. That will set the crop. Then drag the cropped clip to the timeline. Select the clip in the timeline. Do Edit/Paste Adjustments/Crop. Select one or more clips in the timeline. Do Edit/Paste. That will paste your crop into all the other clips that you selected.

-- Rich

Correcting my previous post, to copy and paste adjustments, you select the clip containing the adjustments, then Edit/Copy and then Edit/Paste Adjustments to another selected clip. Here's a help menu link that explains the process:

https://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.1/#/mov58103651f

-- Rich

Yes, I do know a trick to get a "portrait" end product. There are three ways that you can do this, but the one described below is the easiest.

The procedure involves using the crop tool rotation controls to Rotate the clip so that it is sideways. It will fill the screen with no black bars, but in a sideways configuration. Export it sideways. It will export with no black bars. Then open it in QuickTimePlayer and do an Edit/Rotate Clip to rotate it right side up again so that it is vertical. There will be no black bars. More details below.

Here's the vertical clip selected in the timeline. It has large black bars on each side. If you export it that way the black bars will remain. Click on the clip in the timeline to select it. Then use the crop tool's rotation rectangles to rotate it sideways.

Here's the clip rotated sideways.

Export the sideways clip. Open it in QuickTimePlayer. Do an Edit/Rotate Clip. Save. Your final product will

look like the vertical screen shot below, with no black bars.

-- Rich

You are welcome. I hope that it will solve your issue. 😊

-- Rich