Hey guys, and welcome back
to Final Cut Pro Thursdays.
In todays video I’m going to show you
how to fix the lens distortion,
or the fisheye effect caused by wide angle lenses,
like the ones found in GoPro cameras.
There’s a few different ways to accomplish this,
and I will show you the two methods I like to use.
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Ask any questions you may have in the comments,
and I will do my best to help you out.
My first method uses a
Wide Angle Fix plugin from Alex4D.com.
If you haven’t yet, go to alex4d.com,
download and open the installer app,
and follow the on screen instructions.
For more information on downloading and installing plugins,
check out my previous video.
I’ll link it in the description and up top.
Using this method,
everything can be done in right in the Final Cut Pro application.
I have some footage in my demo project
shot with a GoPro camera
using the wide capture setting.
This is a great setting because it captures
a very wide field of view in your video.
One side effect though,
is anything towards the edges of your video
gets distorted and curved,
and this is referred to as the fisheye effect.
This is very apparent if you have objects
with straight lines, such as buildings or trees,
close to the edges of your video.
I’ll select my clip, open the effects browser,
find the Wide angle fix effect plugin,
and drag and drop it over my clip.
What this will do, is zoom in on your video a little bit,
and straighten the edges.
I’ll open the inspector and toggle this effect on and off.
Pay attention to the tree on the right side
and the walkway at the bottom.
Much straighter,
but we do loose quite a bit of footage at the edges.
From the inspector,
you can choose from one of the included lens presets,
or select custom and use this slider
to adjust the amount of effect applied.
You can select this grid checkbox
to display grid lines over the viewer,
to help you with the adjustment slider.
You can also straighten out the horizon,
by selecting rotate and scale clip from the dropdown menu,
and using the rotate handle in the viewer.
This will rotate your clip,
and scale it up at the same time to fill the picture frame.
The second method I use to fix fisheye effect,
is using the GoPro studio app
before I import the clips into Final Cut Pro.
This app can be downloaded for free from GoPro’s website.
I’m not a big fan of using this app to edit video,
but it does have a couple features missing from FCP.
So when I know I have one or more clips
with fisheye effect that I need to fix,
I fix them with GoPro studio before importing into FCP.
I’ll open GoPro Studio,
click on the import button
and select the clip I want to fix.
I’ll select the clip,
and click on the advanced settings button.
Here, I always leave the image and frame rate
same as my source clip,
set the quality to high
and select the remove fisheye checkbox.
Now, I can rename my clip,
choose the file destination,
and click add to conversion list.
The video file is added to my conversion list.
After all my files are added,
I’ll click this covert button.
Now, I’ll close GoPro studio
and import the converted files into FCP.
I’ll review and compare my clips.
With the Wide Angle Fix plugin more fisheye is removed,
but you also loose more footage from the clip edges.
And with the GoPro studio method,
you keep more footage, but less effect is applied.
The method I use depends on the clip,
and how I want my finished product to look.
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Thanks for watching, and until next time.