Instagram Stories.
Insanely popular, and so easy to make.
You just record a 15 second clip,
add a filter, some stickers and text,
and upload it.
Very simple, and exactly what everyone else does.
But, if you put some thought into your stories,
edit a short video,
and add some unique elements,
you’re guaranteed to stand out
and get more views and engagement,
and today, I’m going to show you
how to do exactly that.
Hey guys, whats up.
My name is Serge
and welcome back to my channel.
In today’s video,
we’ll take a look at how to edit
Instagram Stories in Final Cut Pro,
and to make them stand out,
add some unique elements
from the Insta Stories Final Cut Pro pack,
made by EasyEdit, available in the Envato Market,
who is today’s sponsor.
Let’s jump into Final Cut Pro,
and take a look at how to edit Instagram Stories.
First, Instagram is a vertical video platform,
so we need to adjust our
project settings for vertical video.
Open a new project, by selecting File,
New and Project,
and in the popup window,
click the Use Custom Settings button.
To make your project vertical,
from the video dropdown menu,
select custom,
and flip the resolution numbers around,
so 1080 by 1920.
This will give you the best possible
image quality for Instagram.
Select your frame rate and click OK.
Now, when you add a video,
or a still image to your timeline,
the vertical aspect ratio
is optimized for viewing on a mobile device.
If your clip was recorded vertically,
the image will fill your entire frame.
If you recorded at a different aspect ratio,
you’ll have black bars on top
and bottom of your clip.
To fill the entire frame, with your clip selected,
click the transform button,
scale up your clip until the entire frame is filled,
and if needed, re frame your image.
Let’s delete these for now,
and first, take a look at some of the presets
in the Insta Stories Final Cut Pro pack.
Open your titles and generators browser,
scroll down,
and select the Insta Stories FCPX category.
Scroll down in the titles browser,
and after titles and backgrounds,
you’ll find a bunch of pre made Insta Stories presets.
These are all optimized for Instagram,
and are very easy to use.
Skim over one of these presets
to preview what it’ll look like.
As you can see,
they all come with cool elements
with titles and animations built right into the preset.
Pick the preset you want to use,
and drag and drop it into your timeline.
All the included presets are 15 seconds long,
exactly the length allowed on Instagram Stories.
All you have to do is change the text,
color, and images
for your own custom Instagram Story.
Open the Inspector Window,
and at the top,
select the Titles Inspector.
This is where you can enter
your own text for the Titles,
and change the image or video used in this preset.
Click on the drop zone box,
go back to your media browser,
and select the video clip or still image for your story.
Click the Apply Clip button.
If you skim through the clip,
as you can see,
your text and the drop zone clip
both have cool animations added to them,
all done for you,
without having to use any keyframes.
If you go back to the inspector,
you can change the color of your text and backgrounds,
reposition and resize the text,
and even change the scale and framing
of your drop zone image.
If you want to further customize your text,
hover over it in the viewer
until you see a white box around the text.
Click inside the white box to switch to the text inspector,
where you can change the font and size,
and further customize your text.
You can customize these presets
as much or as little as you want,
and still make a cool Instagram Story clips like these
that stand out in just seconds.
Lets take a look at another preset
we can use to promote YouTube videos.
Go back to the Titles and Generators browser,
and scroll down to the video category.
Skim through these presets
and pick the one you like.
Select it, and press E to add it to the end of your timeline.
To add videos to these drop-zones,
click on the first drop zone button,
and in the media browser,
select the clip you want to add.
Pay attention to where your play head is in the clip,
because this will be where the video starts.
If you want it to play from the start,
make sure your playhead is right at the start of the clip.
If you want the video to start at a certain point,
place your skimmer on that frame,
and single click to move the playhead there.
Click apply clip.
Next, enter your text,
adjust the scale and framing of your video clip,
and any other available parameters to match your brand.
The pre-made presets included in this pack look amazing,
but if you want more control over your Instagram story,
you can build it manually with the included titles,
backgrounds and other elements.
Down in my timeline,
I have a 15 second edited project
I want to use for my Instagram story.
First thing we want to do
is add some transitions to the video clips.
Open the transitions browser,
and select the transitions category included in this pack.
All these are designed specifically for Instagram stories,
and you can skim over any one of these for a preview.
Add these to your timeline just like any other transition.
Next, let’s add some text to our story.
Go back to the Titles and Generators browser,
and select any of the included animated titles.
Let’s add a couple from the Typography category
at the start of our story.
At the end of the story,
let’s add some up arrows
and some text
to encourage the audience to swipe up.
Here’s what we have.
Now, to upload this video as an Instagram story,
you have to export it from Final Cut Pro
and transfer it to your phone.
Hit the share button,
select Master File,
and on the Settings page,
change the video codec to H.264.
When your export is complete,
the easiest way to move this file
to your phone is to air drop it.
Right click on the video file,
select Share,
Airdrop, and select your phone.
Once your video is on your phone,
open Instagram,
click on the add to story button,
and select the picture icon in the bottom left corner.
Select your edited clip,
and hit the share button next to your story.
Now all thats left to do is sit back
and watch the likes come in.
The Instagram Stories Final Cut Pro pack
from EasyEdit is available for purchase
from the Envato Market.
It’s not free,
but if you want to take your Instagram Stories up a level,
the $35 USD will be money well spent.
This pack is one of Envato’s best sellers,
and includes over 250 different compositions
for Instagram Stories,
including pre-made scenes,
backgrounds, titles and more.
Before I end this video,
I’d like to thank Envato for sponsoring this tutorial,
and giving talented developers like EasyEdit
a platform to distribute their awesome plugins.
I’ll leave a link in the description to Envato Market,
where you can download this,
and many other awesome plugins
for Final Cut Pro and Motion.
Thanks for watching,
and I’ll see you back here next week.