Crops… are all well and good, but sometimes you’d rather retain the complete, original image. For example, if you need to make a 4:3 dailies tape which contains 16:9 elements, you’d better be sure the whole image is there in case anything important is happening at the edges. In this case, what you need is a letterbox, rather than a crop.

A letterbox retains the original shape of the footage, typically filling the rest of the frame with black (in the case of Final Cut Pro and Motion, the underlying layers provide the rest of the frame, or if there are no underlying layers, the background colour is used). By default FCP will letterbox any footage that doesn’t fit the timeline completely, automatically scaling it so that either the top and bottom or the left and right edges fit completely within the frame. This means that ordinarily you don’t need to do anything to letterbox footage. If for some reason you do (and are happy to use FCP’s scaling process to do it), the easiest way is to adjust the scaling parameter until it looks right. If you need it pixel-accurate, you’ll have to get your calculator out and plug in some numbers to get the exact percentage:

( width of timeline output / width of footage ) x 100

Repeat this for the timeline output and footage heights and compare the two results. For a perfect letterbox, use the lower percentage. Conversely, for a perfect crop, use the larger percentage.

Starting with your original image–

 
–crop to fill the frame–

–or letterbox to keep the whole image.

Tip: To have FCP letterbox everything in a sequence use: Modify / Scale To Sequence

The only sure-fire way to check which shots Final Cut Pro has seen fit to resize automatically is to look at the motion tab for each shot. Make this easier for yourself by setting the canvas sync to Open, then quickly spool through the timeline with the Motion tab open.

The next part of this series will look at aspect ratios.

(Images featured in this article are Copyright 2007 BBC Worldwide Inc.)

In this part of the “Resizing Shots in Final Cut Studio series, we’ll look at different methods for cropping a shot.

Sometimes you need to adjust footage to fit into a different size frame. For instance, you may need to add high definition material to a standard definition timeline. In these situations Final Cut Pro will automatically scale the footage up or down to fit the timeline. However, any form of scaling (and particularly FCP’s default scaling) will reduce image quality. If you find yourself in this situation, calmly open the motion tab for the shot and set the scaling back to 100%. This will ensure you get a pixel-perfect rendition of the original shot, and FCP will instead crop the footage to fit, instead of scaling it.

What this means is that all the pixels that don’t fit within the frame are discarded, in the same way you use the crop tool on an image in iPhoto, or a pair of scissors on a disappointing article based around Final Cut Studio.

What becomes important at this point is the region of interest, that is, the part of the image you want to keep. Final Cut Pro will keep the image centred by default (performing what’s known in the trade as a centre cut-out), but that doesn’t mean you have to keep it this way. Instead you can use the Center control to reposition the image (we’ll be covering the “Pan & Scan” technique that dynamically repositions a shot over time in a future article).

There is another situation which may require the use of a crop, which is when you mix footage which is a different shape. The most common example of this is adding widescreen-formatted (16:9) material to a fullscreen (4:3) sequence (or vice versa). In this case, the procedure is exactly the same, except that you may only need to crop the top and bottom of the image (or left and right sides), keeping the rest.

The option to crop crops up quite a lot within Final Cut Studio*. You’ll see check-boxes and dialogue boxes with crop options all over the place throughout Final Cut Pro, Motion and Compressor, particularly when working with different kinds of media. Just be aware that in general, cropping will discard the edges of an image in favour of filling the frame.
*Sorry, I couldn’t resist that.

Tip: To crop unwanted parts of a frame, use the Crop parameters in the Motion tab. You can also feather this effect to soften it.