letterbox questions

When you click on the video clip the properties of the clip appear in the upper right hand corner. Under the video tab you have the crop area which is what I assume you are using to do your letterboxing. Above that is the Transform area. Make sure you click on the Show part of the Transform area to expand that part of the inspector. Choose the Position X and Y values to move the clip left, right, up or down. When you adjust the Y value, for example, you will notice that your letterboxing changes. Position the clip using the Y (positive and negative values are allowed) then go back and re-adjust your crop values for the Top and Bottom crop areas until they are the same size and are the size you want. You can go back and forth between position adjustment using the Transform area and letterboxing adjustment using the Crop area until you get it as you like. Note that sometimes, after a lot of moving on the Y or X axis, you might adjust the Crop Top or Bottom of your letterbox and not see a change. Keep going. It really is being adjusted. It is simply not in the field of view for a while if the Y value, for example, was changed a large amount. Hope this helps. There may be other ways to do this, but I use this method all the time with no problems.

stephen

There are no controls for that in FCPX. You'd have to add them in Motion or crop the image, but it would be very laborious. There are other ways, like use a generator and a mask, except it seems to be broken.

You can use one of my free Widescreen Matte title generator effects.

Title generator effects have two advantages: you can add a single clip to the whole project that applies the effect to everything 'below' it, and you can adjust the position, scale and rotation of any individual clip in the project and have the letterbox still apply.

Download them for free from my blog.

You can either use my Alex4D Dimensions effects - where you can use a pair of dimensions to define the size of the matte in exact pixels, or my Alex4D Widescreen Matte effect.

The blog post about the Dimensions effects has a tutorial on how to use title generators to apply effects to whole projects as well as tips on how to crop the final output movie.

Hope these help.

Due to Wordpress oddness, the post with Alex4D Widescreen Matte has moved to a new address. Sorry about that.

A