All images are not perfect from the get go. That is the beauty of post. You have the ability to go in and change (hopefully improve) what was captured on the day. Often there will be something around the edges of the frame that you need to remove (boom mics usually) and cropping is the easiest way to do this.
final cut pro crop window
Where is the Crop Window?
Inside of Final Cut Pro, open any visual media (images and videos) in the Viewer by double clicking on the clip from the Browser or the Timeline. Then click on the Motion Tab and click on the little arrow next to the word Crop and you will see the window pictured above.
What is this Crop all about?
Cropping is basically cutting off pieces of your image. For example, if you had a picture of yourself with a bunch of friends, but you only wanted to show your face, you would crop the image to remove your friends. Not that I hate friends, its just an example.
In Final Cut Pro, you use the slider controls to crop the image inward from the Left, Right, Top or Bottom. Go ahead and play around with these and you will quickly see the effects. There is also the Edge Feather option which will make your edges soft rather than sharp. You can slide this around and see the effects in the Canvas. One limitation to the edge feather is that you cannot control which edges are feathered. It automatically feathers them all.
Why Would I want to Crop anything?
There are a few practical reasons I can think of to crop something and countless creative possibilities. Here are the practical ones:
- Remove a boom mic from the top of the frame.
- Create what is called a Split. This is only possible when your camera is locked off, or not moving. You use the crop tool to cut the frame in half and put a different take on the layer below. For example, you could have a shot of two people sitting in chairs looking at camera. On take 1 the person on the left is reacting how you like, but the person on the right is not. You can create a split so that you have take 1 of the person on the left and take 2 of the person on the right.
- Do the 24 thing. Everybody has seen the show 24 where they have 3 or 4 different boxes on screen playing different videos to show that all these things are happening at once. Cropping is how you achieve this.
As always, there are multiple reasons to use the crop tool. Let us know how you use it in the comments!
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