how to export an oddly-shaped video from FCP and maintain that shape?
January 23, 2022 12:07 PM   Subscribe

Not sure how to explain this - There has to be a way to either crop or export the video in Final Cut Pro so that the format/frame rate/resolution matches the original file without ending up with black bars on either side, but I can't figure it out.

I've been given a very short video and asked to blur out a face. The blur is not a problem. The video is an odd shape, and when I import it to FCP, FCP adds lots of black to the left and the right. When I export it, the black remains. The original source does not have these black spaces. Help?
posted by tzikeh to Technology (4 answers total)
 
This starts with the import I think -- you want to make sure that the FCP project settings match the resolution and framerate of the video you're trying to import. It looks like you can set a custom resolution for a FCP project, so just do that and then re-import.
posted by goingonit at 2:20 PM on January 23, 2022 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I would guess that it's the project that has these resolution settings - for instance, the project is 1280x720 and the video is 1080x720 or something, so it centers and windowboxes it. Check the resolution of the original video file and set the project resolution to that with everything else the same. That's probably the simplest way.

If for some reason that's not an option, there's probably a way to export a cropped section of the project, look around for that in the "Export..." advanced settings area or possibly something like viewport. It's commonplace to have projects that are larger than the source videos, which can be stretched, moved, cropped etc to fit the viewport.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:06 PM on January 23, 2022


Not an ideal solution, but if you can't figure out how to do this with FCP you can crop away the black bars by running it through Handbrake. Handbrake lets you specify the pixel dimensions of the export. I've had to do this because iMovie does not let you edit or export videos with non-standard dimensions.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 3:44 PM on January 23, 2022


Response by poster: Thanks - I will try all of these and report back!
posted by tzikeh at 12:52 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]


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