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tullamore · Mar 19, 2002, 03:38 AM

I have some quicktimes that I want to crop. Example: Cut out the middle of the movie leaving just a widescreen shot. I can crop with Final Cut Pro, but it exports it uncropped.

Is there any program that makes it easy to crop a movie?

lucylawless · Mar 19, 2002, 04:38 AM

if you mean cutting the edges off each frame, I found a nice solution with quicktime pro a while back in this thread. If you mean covering the edges with black, like a widescreen movie on tv, you might find a lead or two in that thread as well. If you mean what iMovie means by cropping (cutting the frames off the beginning or end of a movie), you wouldn't be complaining about FCP. Otherwise, I guess you need to clarify what you mean by cutting out the middle

tullamore · Mar 19, 2002, 05:45 PM

What I meant I want to do is take a video and cut the top of it off to make a video that has a different aspect ratio. For example making a movie that is letterbox looking without using black bars.

Chuck_star · Mar 20, 2002, 01:45 AM

Export from FCP(custom size). Figure out the exact size when croped.

tullamore · Mar 20, 2002, 03:36 AM

Originally posted by Chuck_star:
<STRONG>Export from FCP(custom size). Figure out the exact size when croped.</STRONG>

That squashes the video, not crops it. Even when you crop the clip in FCP, when it is added into the sequence it is 720x480 again (but has nice black bars) if you export it as a custom size is squashes or stretches that sequence to fit instead of cutting it.

lucylawless · Mar 20, 2002, 04:31 AM

so it sounds like you need to both crop and customize the size in FCP. But if you had read that thread I linked to before, you would see that you don't even need to go to FCP. Just make an image file with black for the parts of the frame you want and white for the parts you don't want. The open your movie in QTPro and choose Movie->Get Movie Properties->Video Track->Mask and choose that image file you just made.

alxalxnet · Jan 18, 2003, 08:14 PM

Originally posted by lucylawless:
so it sounds like you need to both crop and customize the size in FCP. But if you had read that thread I linked to before, you would see that you don't even need to go to FCP. Just make an image file with black for the parts of the frame you want and white for the parts you don't want. The open your movie in QTPro and choose Movie->Get Movie Properties->Video Track->Mask and choose that image file you just made.

I had the same problem and I followed all the instructions. However, Quick Time simply "hides" the black stripes. In fact, the final video, even if both cropped and customized, is still as big (in terms of Mb) as the original one.

Uncle Skeleton · Jan 19, 2003, 04:35 AM

if your concern is file size, then it's not the same problem, is it?

with compressed video, you can't just throw away parts of a frame to save room (you can throw away frames, though). If you need a smaller file, you can try re-encoding after adding the mask (edit -> export), but this is highly unrecommended if your file is already encoded with a lossy codec (basically anything but Animation), because among other things the new compressor must try to preserve the artifacts of the old one.

if you need a smaller file, though there are a few other things you should try first. You can cut out credits from the movie, or delete extraneous audio tracks, or re-encode the audio at a lower bitrate, or with aac*, or in mono, or a combination.

*re-encoding to aac from another format like mp3 or Q-Design or aac faces the same disadvantages as re-encoding video. But for me at least my ears are less sensitive, and usually the video is compressed much more than the audio so the effects are worse with video

alxalxnet · Jan 19, 2003, 02:23 PM

I see your point Uncle Skeleton ;-)
Thanks!