Still photos in Final Cut Pro X do not fill up the screen

You'll do better if you post in the Final Cut X forum:

https://discussions.apple.com/community/professional_applications/final_cut_pro_ x

This forum is for Final Cut Pro 7 and earlier as well as the associated apps that were part of the Final Cut Studio Suite.

Good luck,

x

I don't have paintshop pro but the premise should be the same. Make your photos thee same size as your video resolution

Meaning 720x480 or 720 x 486, or if your work is in high def, make your images the same size as your video.

find out the resolution of your video, edit your photos to be the same size and they should import at 100%.

Your in the wrong forum, go to the Final Cut Pro X discussion

When you add a picture to your video, by default the Spatial Conform parameter is set at "Fit" - this will automatically scale your image so that it entirely fits inside the video frame. You can change it to "Fill" in the Inspector - then the image will fill the video frame.

You don't need to crop the image outside FCP X.

You also don't need to reduce the image size. Indeed if the image is larger, you can take advantage of it by, for example, using the Ken Burns effect, or otherwise move it and resize it onscreen using keyframes.

Final cut does and should automatically resize your images to fit your project. FOr example if I have an image that's 1280 x 720, it'll put it onto my 720x480 timeline at 40% original size (or whatever the proper math is).

However to find out the resolution of your project, open the timeline, go to file, project properties and over on the right you'll see the pixel size of your project, along with the frame rate.

Final Cut does sometimes resize things well, sometimes not so much. I've found if I make my graphics to fit my project I ened up with something I'm happier with than if I let the computer do it for me.

But YMMV, different people do things different ways.

DSLRs and compacts shoot images in a different frame ratio to video which is either 16:9 HD or 4:3 for standard definition.

DSLR still are approx 5:4 ratio.

In order to have your stills 'fit' the video frame correctly without stretching, squishing or cropping the imported image must be at that frame ratio.

If you wish your still ratio not to be altered in any way then you will have dark bars at either side.

If you want your image to fill the frame then you will have to decide on a crop. Top or sides

A couple of ways In Photoshop, I guess there must be an equivalents in PaintShop, goes like this.

First quick and dirty:

export a still from your FCPX timeline.

Open in Photoshop.

Select Image - Image Size - note the dimensions - 1920x1080@72

Change the Resolution to 150 or 300 if you are going to zoom your image in FCPX.

Close window.

Select Crop tool - set the values to Front Image.

Your crop tool can now be used to crop your images to 16:9. @150/300

the second way if you want to create graphics or work on your images first.

Select File - New -

In the dialog box drop down select Film and Video

Choose HDTV 1080p.

Notice the frame size and pixel dimensions - 1920x1080@72p/i.

This will form the canvas in which you can create or drag and drop your image into.

Your stills will certainly be larger than 72dpi resolution so you have to keep resizing in order to get the cropping you want.

Once finished export as jpg or png.

Note:

you will now have an image that will fit exactly ..however if you wish to zoom make sure you have set your resolution to 150dp //300dpi. This will allow you to perform x2 x4 zooms without pixelation in FCPX.

BTW I use Lightroom which blows Photoshop or PaintShop out of the water.

If you intend to import/process more than two or three images into FCPX then its a no brainer.

If fact I stopped using PSD for stills years ago, can never go back.

I can batch crop, color corrected, filter, effects etc..export to FCPX 1000 timelapse stiils in around 10 minutes.

LynnZee

If you haven't yet figured out how to do this, I think I found the answer. I was also going crazy trying to fill up the entire frame with a cutaway shot of a still photo in Final Cut Pro X (I never encountered this problem in IMovie). The video underneath kept showing through around the edges of the picture. What I finally figured out was that you have to select the video clip UNDERNEATH the photo on the timeline, not the photo itself. You need to adjust this CLIP, not the photo. Then you go to the inspector, select "color correction". Then go to "exposure". To make the video surrounding the edges of the photo appear black, just pull down the exposure button all the way to underexpose the video clip. To make the edges around the photo white, pull the exposure button all the way up to overexpose the video clip. Then, using the precision editor, trim the "blacked out" version of the underlying video clip to match the duration of your cutaway photo. I hope this answers your question.

Select the image on the timline, go to Spatial Conform in the Video Inspector and select Fill.

Be prepared to lose a little at the top and bottom. Switch on the Transform tab to see just how much .

Selecting Fit will produce black bars at the sides and None will expand the image to its original pixel count. For example if the image is 150dpi then it will be approximately twice the frame size of the frame, remember video is screen resolution 72dpi. I appreciate that dpi is infact a print term but you get the picture!

I did try this method at first, but, for some reason the "Fit" seemed to only put the black bars on my landscape format photos that I never cropped and the "Fill" zoomed in on the photos way too much. I then played around until I found the other technique that I mentioned above. I didn't know about the video resolution being less dpi than the photo resolution--now it makes sense why this is happening. For some reason, in IMovie this issue doesn't occur with the cutaway shots of photos.

Have to take into account the mis-match in aspect ratios between a video frame and a photo. Assume for the sake of argument the video is 16:9 (1.71:1) and the photo is 1.5:1. If you just drop the photo into the video without adjusting the photo size, the difference in the aspect ratio will show up black bars on either side (pillar boxing). That is the Fit setting in FCP. If you want to eliminate the black bars, you can zoom into the image just enough to fill the frame; that's the Fill setting.

As you note, the Fill choice can result in poor composition.

A couple of alternatives are:

1) use the transform function to manually resize and reposition the photo so it's composed to your liking;

2) keep the pillar boxing but put it on a layer above a background of your choice. Could be a generator with a sympathetic color; could be a blurred and zoomed duplicate of the photo.

Russ

Great tips guys. Thanks!!

Video vs stills pixelcount? to get your head around it, export a still frame from a video, open in Photoshop or Preview and have a look at the Image Size inspector. Now try this with a selection of stills from different cameras.

Just to add confusion ...be aware that some cameras/devices produce images in different ways.

For example my iPod 5 actually generates an image at 2592 × 1936 pixels @72dpi. whereas the Nikon D800 7360 × 4912 pixels @300 dpi.

So... the iPod still can only be 'zoomed' only 200% if dropped into a 1280x720 timeline. Using the 'Fit' function will resample the 2592 to approx 1280 and 'dpi' to 150.

If you really want to fry your brain try the resampling function in Photoshop on some stills. First using the pixel dimensions then the 'dpi' and see how things change.

have fun.

Very interesting. I see now that there is a whole lot more to this issue than I thought. Thanks!