Cropping for widescreen effect

Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

Cropping for widescreen effect

Posted by Barney Batchelor on October 21, 2009 at 8:20 pm

I’m in the middle of editing a short film I have made and one of my friends who uses Premier Pro crops the top third and bottom third of his films to give a cinelike ultra widescreen effect. Is this possible in Final Cut Pro? Or do I have to do this upon finishing and exporting my movie? Just because it would be ideal to set this to all the shots now so I can see how it looks whilst I’m editing.

We’ve shot in 1080/25p and I’m not sure how to best export this for PAL settings (based in the UK) either.

Let me know if anybody has any ideas, all help is greatly appreciated.

B

Andrew Kimery replied 16 years, 7 months ago 4 Members · 6 Replies
6 Replies

Scott Sheriff
October 21, 2009 at 9:07 pm

There is a matte filter for that in the filter list, just do some looking.
There is also the ability to crop under the motion tab, which could be copied to all the clips in the timeline.
This is all FCP 101 stuff you should know.
Barney Batchelor
October 21, 2009 at 9:20 pm

Thanks mate. It is stuff I should know but I’d forgotten and have to adhere to a deadline. My editing classes we’re in Avid last year so I’ve had to navigate my own way round FCP for a while now, I’m going on a crash course in December for a week so will be more clued up then.

Thanks pal.
John Fishback
October 21, 2009 at 9:39 pm

As you’ve shot 1080, isn’t your film already widescreen (16×9)? You’d only need the letterbox on a 4×3 screen. If you release the film as a DVD, players attached to 4×3 screens should automatically letterbox the film. This option is set when you author the DVD.

John

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Barney Batchelor
October 21, 2009 at 10:02 pm

Thanks John, much appreciated.
Scott Sheriff
October 21, 2009 at 10:15 pm

I thought he meant cropping the image for effect, like 80’s rock videos, not technical reasons.
Andrew Kimery
October 22, 2009 at 5:32 am

Whenever I want to matte the screen like that I use two slugs placed on the top two video tracks. I move one slug to crop off the top of the screen and the other to crop off the bottom. I find this much easier and more flexible than applying the matte filter or cropping each clip individually.

-A

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