Is it possible to crop a clip in FCP?

[Alastair Traill]

Is it possible to significantly crop a clip in FCP 6 (I have 6.0.6)? In this instance the clip is to be used on its own and a loss of quality would not matter greatly.

[Robert Bec]

in the viewer you have a tab called motion click on it and you will find a tab called crop

Rob

[Shaun Roemich]

Further to Rob's answer, you will need to adjust the Scale and Center of the clip after Cropping if you want the clip to remain full screen. I also recommend HIGHLY using Integer (no decimal places) values for Scale and Center to avoid subpixel rendering which can cause further softness in an image. As well, experiment with odd and even values for the Y axis to see which is crisper. There is almost ALWAYS a difference.

[Alastair Traill]

Many thanks Shaun and Robert,

It worked all out better than I hoped, the shot of interest was a blue tongue lizard climbing up a wattle tree then pullinging off a lump of wattle resin and eating it (in another shot). The shot of the eating was set up in a hurry with a long lens, poorly framed and slightly out of focus. Much to my surprise reframing by cropping and then sharpening produced a much more acceptable shot.

[Geoffrey Cox]

Thanks for the tips Shaun. I've used this feature recently for tilted images - straightening them then zooming in and yes a softness is produced. I wonder whether using integers would be better as this will probably mean a bigger zoom is needed thus counteracting the non use of decimal places? Also in order to get correctly oriented images then using decimal places is inevitable really.

[Denise Wall]

Originally Posted by Alastair Traill

Is it possible to significantly crop a clip in FCP 6 (I have 6.0.6)? In this instance the clip is to be used on its own and a loss of quality would not matter greatly.

As detailed, you can crop it and even move it how you want it. This is why SD is still my friend.

[Chris Korrow]

There is of course the crop tool in the tool bar also. Thanks for the integer tip Shaun, didn't know that.

[Alastair Traill]

Thanks Chris,

I have checked out the crop and distort tools in the toolbar. Is there a way of filling the the frame with the cropped image using this crop tool?

[Shaun Roemich]

A cropped clip is just that, cropped. Load the clip into the Viewer, go into the Motion Tab and change the Scale to fill.

[Chris Korrow]

I usually do it as Shaun suggests, though sometimes I do just use the selection tool (black arrow) with the image & wireframe & just drag a corner.

You can also rotate with the image & wireframe, which is what I use if I want something to spin for several revolutions (add keframes first of course)

[Alastair Traill]

Thanks Shaun and Chris very much appreciated.