How do I get rid of the letterbox for YouTube

Question

How do I get rid of the letterbox for YouTube

Hello

I'll try to get as much information in here as possible!!

I am recording my footage on a Canon Ixus 220 HS which shoots in widescreen. My Mac book and camera are both brand new so I'm just getting used to them. I created a video but it has a letter box on it which takes up quite a bit of my screen on YouTube. This is the result

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0BRikwJ6OE

I was told that I should be editing my footage in 4:3 however I thought YouTube screen is widescreen now? Also when I select the different variations of 4:3 the letter boxing is still there.

Is there something really obvious that I am overlooking?

Thanks in advance for any help

Final Cut Pro 7, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Nov 25, 2011 12:21 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 25, 2011 12:36 PM in response to CharlotteAlana

Your Canon Ixus shoots in 1080p so you should certainly choose one of the HD settings for compression. I'd go for the 1440 x 1080. You may also need to look the YouTube encoding options.

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Answer 2

Nov 25, 2011 1:15 PM in response to Jonathan Rooper

Thanks Jonathan. I've just had a play about with the sequence sizes, seems that I can put some footage in, then choose my size (letter box goes) but as soon as I put some more footage in, that footage has the letterbox but the first lot of footage doesn't have it in. Not sure if it's a glitch.

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Answer 3

Nov 25, 2011 2:36 PM in response to CharlotteAlana

Hi Charlotte

I think the problem might be to do with the way you bring your footage from the camera into FCP, or the project settings you're using in FCP. Try to make sure that you capture / transfer footage so that it comes into FCP in its original format. Then, when you create a new FCP project, the first time you drop a clip in the timeline you'll probably get a dialogue box asking if you want to change the project to the format of the clip. Click 'yes' and, theoretically, all further clips should match the new project settings.

Hope that helps.

Jonathan

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Answer 4

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Nov 25, 2011 5:15 PM in response to CharlotteAlana

Charlotte,

Jonathan's suggestion to let FCP determine your sequence settings from your initial clip is great advice. Export your sequence as a self-contained QT Movie (current settings), bring it into Compressor as the source file, use the YouTube preset and it should give you the result you're looking for.

Russ

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Answer 5

Dec 24, 2011 1:07 PM in response to Russ H

Hi Everyone

I have managed to solve the problem, the video uploads now with pillar boxing instead of letter boxing, once uploaded I put in a YouTube code wich stretches the video to the correct size. Below are screen shots of my settings on Final Cut Pro 7.

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