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Still Image Question, Final Cut (express)
Hey all,
Like other posters, I have scoured the web (and other forums) for answers to this question before posting. And like others, the more I read the more lost and confused I get. Here goes.
I am editing a video using Final Cut Express 4.0.1. The video itself was shot on an iPhone 4, and so it is HD. (FCE tells me that the frame size is 960 x 540 – the video was imported from the iphone onto my mac using image capture; this resulted in h.264 files which I then converted to AIC so I could use them in Final Cut Express without rendering). This video will be perfect to display on a widescreen television when I am finished editing.
But here’s my problem. Throughout the video, I would like to include still photos that have a different (more square) aspect ratio. When I export a sequence that has both video and these stills, the stills are taking up the area of the screen that the video should be taking up, and the 16:9 video portions are squished from the top and bottom.
Is there any way to tell FCE: “Lock the frame size for this sequence at 960 x 540, and if there is a still shot that is outside of these dimensions, only show the portion of that still that falls within the 960 x 540 frame and do not squish the picture?”
I appreciate any help anyone could give me, and thank you for your time.
Best,
Matt -
4 Replies
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“The video itself was shot on an iPhone 4, and so it is HD.”
Excuse me while I recover from my belly laugh. HD in whose world? An ant’s? 960×540 is something Apple concocted to half the size and the data rate of its media and display it as HD. It’s a joke.
FCE does not use a sequence resolution of 960×540. Look at the presets. They’re 1920×1080, 1440×1080, and 1280×720.
Open the still into the viewer and reset the scale value.
All the best,
Tom
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop” -
Sorry Tom, my bad. For some reason (perhaps errant converting), SOME of the video clips in the bin are listed as 960 x 540, but the overwhelming majority of them are 1280 x 720, and I have set the sequence settings to 1280 x 720, 30 fps, using Apple Intermediate Codec.
Any advice on how I can get stills to stay within this framework without being stretched or squashed? As I said in the original post, I don’t care if I lose some of the photo because it’s outside the frame.
Your help is appreciated.
Matt
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Also,
Tom I see that I can rescale the value in the viewer, but I have to pick some number from 0-100. How do I tell it “match the size that fits my 1280 x 720 frame exactly?”
Do I just have to play around with the numbers and see which value best approximates it?
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Normally when you place an image in the FCE timeline the image is automatically scaled to fit the window. That’s a user preference and the default setting. No squeezing or stretching is involved, simply scaling.
All the best,
Tom
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”
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