Today, we’re going to learn how to convert
your Final Cut Pro project,
edited in the conventional 16 by 9 aspect ratio,
to a vertical or a square video format,
for distribution on different social media platforms
such as TikTok or Instagram.
And, with the latest update to Final Cut Pro,
version 10.4.9, this is easier than ever.
Hey guys, what’s up.
My name is Serge and welcome back to my channel.
A few days ago, Final Cut Pro was updated to version 10.4.9.
This update adds some fairly major,
and much welcomed features,
including Enhancements to Proxy Editing,
Audio Crossfades,
and the most exciting feature, the one we’ll look at today,
Automated Tools for Social Media Cropping.
Let’s jump into Final Cut Pro
and take a look at what it’s all about.
Down in my timeline, I have a short demo project,
filmed and edited in a 16 by 9 aspect ratio.
This is perfect for posting to YouTube or other similar platforms,
but if you want to share this project to a mobile platform,
such as TikTok or Instagram
you have to convert it to a vertical or a square format.
Before this latest update,
if you wanted to convert your project to a different aspect ratio,
you had to make a new project,
copy all your clips into this project,
than manually re-frame each individual clip.
Not very efficient at all.
The 10.4.9 update to Final Cut Pro
makes this process much easier.
To convert your project to a different aspect ratio,
locate the project in the media browser,
and right click on it.
In the popup menu, you’ll see a new option,
Duplicate Project As…
Click on this new option.
In the next popup, give your project a new name,
and open the dropdown menu for the video format.
Inside this menu, you’ll see two more new options,
Vertical and Square.
Let’s select the Vertical format for this demo project,
and select a video resolution.
If we were to just to hit OK here,
Final Cut Pro would simply make a copy of this project
in a vertical video format,
with black bars on top and bottom.
Not exactly what we want.
But, if you select the Smart Conform checkbox,
Final Cut Pro will analyze all you clips,
focus on the most interesting parts,
and automatically conform each clip to fill the entire frame.
Let’s hit OK and take a look at the results.
Depending on the duration of your project,
and the number of clips you have,
this might take a bit of time.
Once done, you’ll see the duplicate copy
of your project in the media browser.
Double click it to open it.
To really appreciate what just happened,
zoom out on your viewer window,
select one of your clips,
and click the transform button.
As you can see by the wire frame,
and the anchor point,
instead of just cropping both sides of the clip equally,
and leaving the center visible,
the Smart Conform tool
automatically found the interesting part of the selected clip
and focused on that part of the frame.
Another thing you’ll notice,
is when you have the transform tool selected,
there’s a new button in the top right corner of the viewer window.
Clicking this button will toggle on and off
the visibility of the entire clip,
just in case you want to tweak the framing of your shot.
Let’s skim through our project,
and see how the Smart Conform tool did on the rest of the clips.
In this clip right here,
you can see our subject moves
from the side of the frame to the middle.
Towards the end of the clip,
the vertical video framing isn’t the best.
Since Final Cut Pro doesn’t have motion tracking,
we have to adjust the framing of this clip manually.
This is easily done with keyframes.
Set your playhead at the start of the clip,
and add a keyframe to the transform parameter.
Move your playhead to where the subject
moves to the center of the frame,
and re-frame your clip.
Let’s see how that looks.
Much better.
I’ll go through the rest of my project,
and if necessary,
adjust the framing of the clips where needed.
Just like that, we now have two versions of our project,
each optimized for sharing on a different social platform.
Much easier than it was before.
Another cool feature added to Final Cut Pro
is Social Media Titles.
Let’s go back to our original project,
and try one out.
Open the Titles and Generators browser,
and select the new Social category.
To best demonstrate these,
let's select one of the lower thirds titles.
Add it to your timeline just like you would any other title.
Take note of the position of this lower third.
Now, let’s duplicate this project,
and this time, change it to the square format for Instagram.
What’s cool about these social titles,
because they’re designed for all available aspect ratios,
is when you change your project to vertical or square video,
the title position automatically adjusts.
So instead of cropping off part of your title,
and making you move it manually,
Final Cut Pro does it for you,
to keep consistency across all platforms.
Like I said at the start of this video,
the Automated Tools for Social Media Cropping
is just one of a number of new features added in the 10.4.9 update,
and as always, all these updates are completely free
to all existing Final Cut Pro users.
If you’re not a Final Cut user,
with the 10.4.9 update,
apple has also renewed the free 90 day trial
to all customers,
even if you’ve used a free trial before.
But fair warning, after 90 days of using Final Cut Pro,
you might not want to go back to whatever you were using before.
Thanks for watching,
and I’ll see you back here next week.