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Auto-Cropping?
Hi~
I’m having an issue where FCP is apparently auto-cropping an HD clip (1280×720) that I’m trying to incorporate into a standard (720×480) timeline.
There’s an option under the Edit tab in User Preferences that tells FCP to “Always scale clips to sequence size”; however, my issue is not that my clip is being resized it’s that it’s being automatically cropped (i.e. centre cut-out cropped). As a result, an important aspect of the clip is being “clipped”.
Any fixes or suggestions offered will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
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11 Replies
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If you are using a 4:3 standard def sequence then how do you want a 16:9 shot to behave? If not center punch then letterbox or anamorphic? The program can’t guess and there are many ways to put a rectangular box in a square hole.
If you want something other than the default then you will only need to to adjust your distort and motion tab settings one one clip, copy that clip and then paste attributes to any other clips that you want to have the same settings.
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Hi Michael~
Thanks for responding.
Naturally, if I place a 1280×720 clip in a 720×480 sequence then I expect a necessary resizing of the clip in order for it to display 16×9 wise without any cropping. Actually, I prefer to manually resize the clip in the motion tab settings as you mentioned. But my problem is not with the resize as I’m quite able to do that; my problem is that FCP is auto-center-cutting (or punching) my clip to make the clip fit. As I said, I’ll make the clip fit myself. I do not want FCP to decide arbitrarily how the clip is going to fit in the 720×480 sequence, and I’m wondering if there’s a way to prevent it from doing that.
Make sense?
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That’s pretty unusual behavior Michael and its certainly not how FCP usually works. FCP allows the option to control the automatic scaling up (to fit) behaviour, but there is no control over scaling down (to fit) control … it always scales down to fit, yet you’re saying that your system is not?
Check your window zoom level in the Canvas as it may be that you are simply not looking at full canvas image (I know, its unlikely but its worth checking)
Failing that, double click the clip instance in question to loads it in the Viewer and confirm for us the Scale value show in the Motion tab.
Now select Modify menu > Scale to Sequence … does it show correctly now?
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Hi Andy,
I think you’re tracking with me; it’s very unusual for FCP to auto-scale and auto-crop.
Unfortunately, none of what you suggested seems to work.
I’ve grabbed an image of the opened project for evaluation. Check it out:
Interesting, no?
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Judging from the screen shot Michael, there seems to be something wrong with the aspect of your source footage … it looks like you have the “Anamorphic” flag checked when it should not be. Your 720p HD footage is viewed natively at 16:9, its not Anamorphic 16:9, so you need to go to your browser window, in list view, and scroll through the columns at right until you see the “Anamorphic” column heading, then un-tick (click on) those tick marks that you see adjacent to your source clips.
While you’re at it, can you confirm that you do indeed want to create a letterboxed 4:3 edit, as your screenshot shows?
Lastly, can you list all of the clip item’s format properties for your source footage, plus note what the camera was for the source and how you captured/ingested the footage. Also list all of the sequence settings for your edit timeline and also note the intended target viewing medium (eg how do you plan to deliver this edit and to whom).
Thanks
Andy -
Thanks for the insight and suggestions, Andy.
This project is an animatic/ripomatic for a vip fashion designer. I was given a number of various clips from the production company working on the project. Although it is just a ripo, the producer wants to really impress the designer with it. That being said, you may ask why in the world then would we be taking HD footage and editing it in a 4:3 sequence? I just work here.
Anyway, I got rid of the Anamorphic flag, but that didn’t remove/fix the automatic centre cut-out problem. Without making things to complicated, I really would love to know why FCP is cropping the clip automatically?
I have 8 different clips sized from 720×480 on up to 1280×720; it is of course the 1280×720 clips that are being auto-cropped. Unfortunately, I do not know what camera was used. I used Mpeg Streamclip to create QT Movies from a number of codecs (incl. mp4 and flv).
The final output will be a standard NTSC DVD, and this will only be viewed by the designer and the immediate suits involved.
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I dont know why FCP does that either, but recently I had the same issue,the way I got around it was to open the clip in the editor window and under its motion tab under the Crop heading put the number 1 into theedge feather crop box. and bang it snapped into position?
hope this helps.
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I am having this same issue when trying to cut some ripped Youtube media (320×240, etc) into an HD project – I just work HERE 🙂
Anyways, Matthew’s solution worked like a charm for me, thanks for that. I am on board with Michael though, in asking Apple “what?” and “why?” If you are going to automatically crop my clips, at least have the decency to allow me to shut this function off…somewhere.Thanks All,
George -
George, it’s not that Apple don’t want to give you the option to control their “auto cropping” behavior, rather the behavior itself, as reported here, appears likely to be a bug … as it should currently NEVER happen (even if you actually wanted it to). I’d think we probably all would like more user control over auto-scaling / cropping behaviors than available at present, but this would be a feature request for a future release, as opposed to a bug report with the current release.
Best
Andy -
wow it actually worked!!!!!!!!!!!!
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