- What is the difference between a 16-by-nine
and two-to-one aspect ratio?
Well, let me show you,
and let me also warn you to be prepared
to have your mind completely blown.
So this is a standard 16-by-nine aspect ratio,
and this
is a two-to-one aspect ratio.
Is your mind completely blown?
Probably not, but let me explain
why I've started to use a two-to-one aspect ratio,
and also walk you through the steps on how to set it up
for your projects using Final Cut Pro.
When it comes to choosing an aspect ratio,
it really is equal parts creative preference
and platform performance.
In terms of creative preference,
a lot of it just might be what you think looks the best,
and that's the reason
why people put letterbox on their videos
to make things look more cinematic.
It's the same reason that when we were kids,
my friends and I would put literally black electrical tape
over the top and bottom of the lens on our cameras
to try to mimic the widescreen format
of the movies we were seeing in the theater at the time,
and that wider frame, that wider aspect ratio,
really does change the way that you compose your shots.
It's kinda the same thing as
if you're just taking like a normal photo
versus a square photo for social media,
it changes the way that you compose things
and frame everything.
But in addition to just your creative preference,
a lot of it also comes down to platform performance.
So take YouTube, for example.
YouTube handles two-to-one videos really, really well.
If you watch them in the desktop viewer,
it plays like natively without any bars
at the top or bottom or sides or anything.
And with YouTube,
a huge percentage of viewership comes from mobile devices,
and over the past few years,
smartphones are all going towards a wider aspect ratio
which is much closer to two-to-one than it is to 16-by-nine.
For example, watching a 16-by-nine video on this iPhone XR,
it looks totally fine,
but if I wanna take advantage of this larger screen
and fill the phone, then there is a chance stuff
near the edge is going to get cut off.
In this case, the top of my head is getting cut off
a little bit more than I wanted to
in the original video file.
Whereas if I watch a video
that is in a two-to-one aspect ratio,
you'll notice that just right away,
it fills more of the frame.
It goes right up to the iPhone's notch,
and if I fill the phone even more,
it does crop a little bit, but it's not nearly as much,
and since I filmed this video knowing
that it was gonna be in two-to-one,
I set it up specifically
so that it wouldn't crop in a negative way,
and that is a much more immersive experience
to see your work filling an entire display,
and fortunately, editing your videos
on a two-to-one timeline is really, really simple.
I'm gonna walk you through how to do it using Final Cut Pro,
but these steps are basically the same on Premiere
or pretty much any editing software.
The first thing you'll need to do is create a new project,
and for the size, you'll wanna select Custom
and then enter in
3,840 by 1,920,
and then whichever framerate you're filming your video in.
And as soon as you do that,
you'll notice that your project window is a little bit wider
and a little bit narrower
than what you might be used to with 16-by-nine.
At this point, you can just import your footage the same way
that you normally would for any project,
but the first thing, as soon as you drag it to the timeline,
you will see that now your project
no longer fills the project window.
You have these black bars on the sides.
So to fix that, you just need to adjust your video size.
I usually just scale mine to about 115%,
and that fills the entire frame,
and then I just adjust the vertical position
to have it framed the way that I want there.
Look at that super cool guy.
Now you do need to do this cropping
on every clip for your project,
and that can definitely be a bit tedious,
but after a while, it becomes a quick part of your workflow
and hopefully it doesn't add too much extra time
to your editing process.
And because you're cropping in your footage,
it is important to remember that when you're filming,
your shot is going to get cropped a little bit,
so you don't wanna put anything really important
near the edges of your screen
because it's probably going to get trimmed
once you scale it and reposition it
to the two-to-one aspect ratio.
So basically just put a safe zone
around the edge of your display,
and put all your important subject matter
closer to the center of the frame.
And how you crop is gonna depend
on the resolution of your footage.
I mainly film at 1080p with the EOS R,
and I don't know what kind of magic is in Final Cut
or the technical reasons behind it,
but scaling up that regular 1,080 footage
to this new 3,800 timeline looks great,
like the videos look terrific.
It doesn't seem like there's any loss
of resolution or quality.
Everything still looks really sharp,
really clear and really good.
And if you are uploading your video to YouTube,
it's important to remember
that YouTube does run its own compression algorithm
on your video once you've uploaded it,
and again, I am not a software engineer,
so I don't know any of the technical stuff behind this,
but I do know that these timelines,
when they're uploaded to YouTube and they're compressed,
they still look really good.
Everything just seems to be very compatible,
and the end result is a great-looking video.
From there in Final Cut,
you just edit your video like normal,
and when you go to export,
you will notice down at the bottom of the export window,
the resolution is now 3,840 by 1,920,
but everything else is exactly the same.
The only real negative I found so far
in using the two-to-one aspect ratio is that sometimes,
depending on where your video is viewed,
there might be small black bars at the top and bottom.
So for example, in portrait mode
on the native YouTube app on the iPhone,
you can see these little black bars right here,
but of course, as soon as I turn the phone into landscape,
those go away and I can fill the entire display.
And the same thing is true when watching
on an iPad on the YouTube app.
You can see these bars at the top and bottom.
They're not super noticeable, but they are there,
and as soon as you do fullscreen, it fills it normal
and it looks like a regular widescreen video,
just a little bit wider than a traditional 16-by-nine.
Ultimately, choosing to use a two-to-one aspect ratio is
just a personal creative choice,
and personally, I do think that it looks better,
and as technology continues to develop
and more and more people are consuming video
on devices with wider displays,
this is going to help your work look its best
for the largest number of people
and devices all over the place.
And beyond all that,
one of my favorite things with a technique like this is
that it doesn't require you to buy or upgrade anything.
It helps your work look better
just by using what you already have
in a slightly different way.
And if you are interested
in helping your work to look as good as it possibly can
without having to spend any extra money,
I did put together a short playlist of tutorials
that I've made where you just use the stuff
that you already have to make your work look even better.
(jazzy music)