this Shotcut square video tutorial shows you how to make square videos by cropping or resizing
the original footage to fit a square viewport let's get straight into it the very first thing
we want to do when we are using Shotcut to create a square video is set the video mode correctly
so on a brand new project you would select your folder type in the name of your project
and then click into video mode as you can see there are lots of predefined options for you but
none of these as far as i'm aware are square so what we need to do is come down to custom
add and then type in the name for what you want this custom video mode to be i'm going to call
mine square video the resolution needs to be the same on the vertical and horizontal axis so you've
got the same amount of pixels going vertical and horizontal i would recommend a minimum of 720
by 720 if you've got a low end camera then it's likely that you will record in 720p
if that's the case then 720 is the number of pixels that you have on your vertical axis when
you're recording in portrait mode so if you set both of these axis to 720 you know that one of
them is going to be correct and you only need to edit the sides of your video if you're recording
in portrait mode effectively what you want to do is work out the lowest number of pixels on
either your horizontal or vertical axis and then copy that lowest number into both of these boxes
for me i usually record in 1080p so mine would be 1080 by 1080 because the other axis
is 1920 so that's a lot higher than the 1080 pixels the aspect ratio calculates the smallest
common denominator between the two resolutions so don't worry if you don't understand what that
means but basically you want to make this one to one because we're making a square video so there's
the same amount of pixels in the horizontal as there are the vertical and the frames per second
if you've got a camera that you're using regularly and you know the fps that you use on that camera
then i would set this to the same frames per second for me i use my phone and it's 30 frames
per second so i'm going to keep 30 frames per second as the default here the scan mode and
color spacing you don't need to worry about too much you can leave these as the default settings
i have mine on progressive and 709 it just means that you've got a little bit of more color depth
but they really don't make a huge amount of difference click on ok when you're done and
that will set the video mode to the new settings we've just applied click on to start and now drag
in some footage into your playlist now as you can see this has gone back to a 16 by 9 ratio
or a 1080p resolution this is not what we want here so come up to settings click on video mode
and go back to your custom which in the example i just showed you is square video this now resizes
your video to fit so nothing is being missed off so by that i mean if the video was in vertical
format it would squish it with a vertical format with black sides rather than as you see it here
with the black top and bottom by default it's not going to chop off any of the video
content now just before we continue if we're meeting for the very first time then my name is
Joe and this channel helps youtubers edit their videos and use free software if you're creating
youtube videos regularly and not seeing the growth you'd hope for you're probably missing one or more
elements of the video creator framework you can download the free pdf in the description below
to get started now let's get back to the video now you can drag your clip into the timeline
and you can start using it as you would usually and this would create a resized video to fit
a square viewport now the alternative option that you may want when you're creating a video
like this is to have zero black on the top bottom or sides so what do we do here so click onto your
video clip come up to filters and then click the plus we want the size position and rotate tool
so type in size and click on the filter this now allows you to zoom in and reposition your content
on the screen so what you can do is on the size mode here click distort and then you get the extra
options on the sides here now you can expand your video to the top and bottom to create a square
which in this case doesn't work very well and it might not work very well for you either but that
may be one of the options that you want to use alternatively select it to fill and then expand
the edges so effectively it zooms in on your video and then center it as you wish if you want
the exact center then you can click on the little grid icon here and you'll get a nice square grid
you can also select other styles of grid and when you select the move tool you can snap to the
center so you know that's in the very center of the video to hide the grid just click on the grid
icon again and it will turn it off so effectively what you've done here is you've cropped the sides
by zooming in on the video if for any reason you didn't want the exact center then you can bring
it over and manually adjust it if you've got a video like this and if i play through very quickly
you may find that to start off with the videos in the right place but then by the end of the video
it's actually kind of off center and you didn't want that maybe you wanted the video
to follow the subject on the screen or if you want to do something like that then you need
to enable keyframes which is done by clicking this button just here go back to the start of
your video and set a keyframe now go to the end of your video select the keyframe option
again and drag your video so your subject is back into the center now when you play through
the subject should stay fairly central and it will look like the subject is moving with the square
video effectively what we're doing here is panning across the full video although we can only see a
small square in our viewport final thing we need to do when we're creating a new video format is
check that out export settings are also correct so before exporting i usually save just in case
anything happens but then click onto the export options click onto advanced and then take a look
at your video tab and the resolution is 1080 by 1080 which is correct for me but the aspect ratio
well actually this would work but you want that to be one by one so it doesn't matter what settings
you have on your resolution if your aspect ratio is one by one then it will always export in the
correct way also check your frame rate just to make sure that that is set correctly but all of
these options down here you can leave as default now when you export it will export as a square
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right now and it will continue to help you with Shotcut i'll see you in the next video