Going from 1920x1080 to 1280x720 crops edges

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Level 2

250 points

Going from 1920x1080 to 1280x720 crops edges

Okay it's late on a Friday and I'm bad at math so there's two reason why I can't figure this out.

My sequence/footage is 1920x1080, and the destination is YouTube, which recommends 1280x720.

So I export with QT conversion, set to 1280x720 ("preserve aspect ratio" box not checked). The resulting video is cropped!

In the Finder it says it is 1280x720, but when I open it in QT and look at the Inspector, it says it's 1248x702.

I might not have noticed the small amount of cropping, but my video had a border around it and now it's gone.

I don't know if it's a problem with going from 1920x1080 to 1280x720 or if FCP/QT always crop stuff and I've just never noticed before.

Has anyone ever experienced this before, or have a solution? (Or have a nice way of telling me I'm cuckoo?)

Posted on Jun 17, 2011 4:48 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Christina Rodriguez

Level 4

1,361 points

Jun 17, 2011 11:16 PM in response to Ann Apuladay

Try exporting a self contained movie with current settings and doing the conversion in Compressor. There you can apply your settings. The good thing about Compressor is that you can see a preview of what your export will look like without actually exporting....

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Answer 2

Ann Apuladay Author

Level 2

250 points

Jun 18, 2011 3:31 PM in response to Christina Rodriguez

Thank you for the tip. I will try that when I get back into the office on Monday.

I'm still wondering if the cropping has something to do with the aspect ratios not being exactly equivalent...

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Answer 3

Jun 19, 2011 11:06 AM in response to Ann Apuladay

No reason not to have preserve aspect ratio checked. both formats 1920x1080 and 1280x720 are 16:9 formats using square pixels. But I generally work the way Christina suggests, exporting a selfcontained qt with current settings from fcp and bringing that file into compressor.

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Answer 4

Seph

Level 1

121 points

Jun 19, 2011 12:56 PM in response to Ann Apuladay

This is most likely the clean aperture "feature" of QT Player, which shouldn't affect how it's displayed anywhere else, including YouTube. The video probably isn't really cropped, QT Player is just displaying it as cropped.

If you have QT Player 7, you can check this by going to Window>Show Movie Properties>Presentation tab. The "Conform aperture to" option is probably checked and set to "Clean". If you uncheck it, you should see the full frame.

In QT Conversion, there are two 1280x720 options, "1280x720 HD" and "HD 1280x720 16:9". The first one should not set the aperture to clean, but the second option (which is listed with NTSC & PAL sizes), will.

However, I also recommend exporting self-contained & running it through Compressor.

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Answer 5

Ann Apuladay Author

Level 2

250 points

Jun 20, 2011 9:17 AM in response to Seph

Thanks Seph! You were right -- the video wasn't really cropped, it was just a display setting. I never even knew about the "Clean" setting. I don't know what they mean by "clean" or why they would even have that option, but selecting any of the other settings brought back the full frame. Thanks!

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