No 4:3 aspect ratio option in iMovie 10.0

The feature to export in 4:3 hasn't actually been taken away. It's just not very obvious how to do it. iMovie is cropping all 4:3 clips automatically to make them 16:9. All you have to do is remove the crop and you're good. Here's how to do it.

1. After importing your clip, place it in your timeline.

2. Highlight your clip in the timeline by clicking on it. It should be highlighted with a yellow border now.

3. Above the viewer pane where your video plays, click on the crop icon that looks like a weird square.

4. Select "fit" next to the style. And click the blue check mark all the way to right.

It expands the crop to fit the whole video. You're now in 4:3.

Unfortunately, Apple removed this option in the latest version of iMovie. After digging around, I found a workaround that is annoying and kludgy, but seems to fix the issue for me.

Bizarrely, this involves using Keynote. First, make your movie in iMovie in widescreen format, then export it to file at the highest possible resolution. Then make a new Keynote presentation with standard aspect ratio and drag your movie into it. Arrange the movie in the presentation as desired (presumably centered to eliminate black pillars) and then export the Keynote as a movie. The output quality appears to be quite good, though the process is certainly annoying. I imagine it could be streamlined using Automator for batches.

Found another workaround.

1. Go to media library

2. Import video in different aspect

3. Export video to Theather

4. Go to Theater and click "more" near video

5. Click "Go to project"

6. Now you can edit your video and when exporting it will keep the format of the imported video

I have been very frustrated with many aspects of iMovie 10-point-whatever that came loaded with El Capitan: no kerning of type allowed in the titles, no option for creating a 4:3 formatted project, very finicky point-sizing of type, etc. etc. I started reading about workarounds, and then realized I had saved my earlier release of iMovie (9-something). All is once again peaceful in the shire.

Shame on Apple for removing very useful features in their software "updates."

I can't seem to find it anywhere myself. Anyone?

Been researching it, and unfortunately the 4:3 aspect ratio doesn't seem to exist in iMovie 10.0.....I am hoping this post and others get to the developers at Apple to give us an update and let us change the aspect ratio. Not all of us need to create "beautiful HD movies." Some of us just need to create basic SD vids, that can be viewed full screen on a 800x600 projector screen without black bars lol.

This is a user to user forum, so it's doubtful any developers will see your post. But you can leave feedback about iMovie here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/imovie.html

When you go to export your movie, the dialogue box gives you the option of saving or exporting your movie in SD (4:3 aspect ratio). However, when I opened the movie, it's fairly clear that the original 4:3 aspect ratio got stretched to accommodate an HD format. Not happy about that.

The SD setting in iMovie 10 export is not 4:3. It is still 16:9. The following link solved this issue for me. I can't understand why Apple didn't make it easy and just put an aspect ration setting on the export/share menu like previous iMovie, instead of burying the workaround in a crop setting, but anyway, it works..

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5590792

Once you set the crop area to the full frame as noted in the previous linked discussion, just do a normal Share - doesn't matter whether you select SD, HD, etc.

The file will be in 16:9, but will have the full 4:3 frames - i.e. the original 4:3 frames will not be cropped and stretched like they are by default. If you view this movie on a 16:9 TV, it will show the full 4:3 frames in the middle with black bars on the side - just like it does when you watch an old 4:3 TV show on an HDTV. If you watch it on a 4:3 TV, it will fill the entire screen.

There is no need to "export as a 4:3 file" in this sense....

If they have a 4:3 monitor, they won't see any black borders. If they have a 16:9 monitor, they will see black borders on each side...

Yes, but what if we are using this on a website and we want create a 4:3 video and it is embedded as part of a page (ie not full screen)?

I'm not sure if this will help however here's what I've figured out so far.

I did a video screen capture that was a little off from a 4:3 ratio. When I create a project that's 16:9 (default) and follow the steps above, the only export choices I get are based on a 16:9 ratio.

When I created an actual 4:3 ratio clip and followed the same steps I did have a 4:3 ratio choice in the export list.

Another thing I realized was, with the clip that's a little off from a 4:3 ratio, I can sellect a section directly from my libarry and share it. When I do this I get a chice of 4:3 ratios that's slitly off in the export menu.

Aloha.