I need to download a YouTube file for a project and because it is in SD, there are some unwanted bars on the left and right. How may I crop those and just have a video image in a regular 4 x 3 screen? Thanks.
What are the pixel dimensions of the files you have downloaded?
MtD
740 x 480... YouTube has their 4x3 SD video at 640 x 480, which likely explains the bars on the left and right.
Sorry - just to be clear - your file that you downloaded is 640 x 480 with black bars on both sides of the image? Is the pixel aspect ratio Square?
MtD
I believe so.
Drop the file on a FCP timeline. Once it is there, double click the clip you just placed on the timeline so that it opens in the Viewer. Click on the Motion tab.
Can you adjust the Scale and the Distort/Apect Ratio to get it to look the way you want?
MtD
Message was edited by: Meg The Dog to fix typo
Oh, yeah. looses some quality because we are getting closer, but best we can do under the circumstances.
You should convert your video to something like ProRes before dropping it into FCP. FCP doesn't like the YouTube mp4 video format and will give you headaches.
You can convert the video to ProRes in Compressor and crop it at the same time.
Just to be on the safe side and to get the best from a conversion, turn on Frame Control and set the resize filter to better (best can be an over kill). If frame control is't needed during the convertion it will not be applied and this will save a little time in the video converions.
Compressor 3 - Cropping Image
