Creating an effect to place 4x3 clip in 16x9 nicely

I've been scratching my head trying to figure out how to create an Effect for FCPX that would allow placing a 4x3 clip on a 16x9 timeline without resizing the 4x3 clip, but instead putting a blurred and stretched version beneath it (They love to do this in TV news).

I can do this with a compound clip in FCPX, but I'm looking for a way to build a Motion Template Effect to pull it off so I can just drop it on a 4x3 clip quickly as needed.

Thanks for the help ahead of time.

That should be easy enough to do with dropzones as a Motion Template.

What DP said. If it was me, I'd make a drop zone for the 4:3. Put a clone of it onto a layer underneath. Resize/stretch the layer and put the blur (direction or gaussian) on it (publishing the intial drop zone and the blur parameter so you have some control in FCP).

As a test of my VERY novice level Motion skills, I played around with this last night.

Good news: I took exactly the approach that robertdee laid out with a drop zone and a scaled, blurred clone below it.

Bad news: how do I make the drop zone 4:3 in a 16:9 project? I can't find a Fit or Spatial Conform option for that drop zone. It by default does a Fill, and crops off the top and bottom of the 4:3 video.

I'm not at my computer just now, but what happens if you don't bother with the drop zone. Make a clone from the effect source and put it below, scale it up and add the blur to that?

Hmm, I'm attempting what the OP was talking about - A Motion-created 16:9 Generator template for FCPX. You add it to a Project in FCPX, click to select a 4:3 clip for the drop zone, and you automatically get:
1. the original clip shown full height with extra space at left and right - the equivalent of Fit in FCPX Spatial Conform, and...
2. filling the extra space is that same original clip beneath it enlarged to fill the frame and blurred - the equivalent of Fill in FCPX

I can get it all to work, except I can't specify the drop zone as Fit, it automatically does Fill. Or there may be an infinitely better way to do this. I see it so much that I can't believe it's done manually every time in the NLE. I just assumed it would have to be a generator, not an effect.

What happens if you do it as an effect, leave the effect later as it is and set the spatial conform in FCPX?

I don't know how it could be done as an effect. but as a generator, the problem is that since the main drop zone is using Fill, it crops off the bottom and top of the 4:3 clip when it's placed. So, even if I do try to size it down later in FCPX, the top and bottom of the clip are not available and then I get black bars at top and bottom as well as at the sides.

I can do it manually in FCPX, but was just trying to make it more automated if I could.

Again, this is not life or death, but just a little experiment I set to see if I could do it. And it sounds like I'm not the only one that might find this useful.

How's this?

Seems to work (if I understand you correctly).

Unzip and put in User/Movies/Motion Templates/Generators.

It's HD Pal version but you should be able to open and adjust for SD and/or longer length (though you may have to copy and paste into a different framerate file if you don't want 25fps)

FYI: I think the trick is to rescale the dropzone to 77% on the x axis.

Yes! That's it! The addition of the feathering is a great idea - my footage is old VCR tape that has some artifacts at the edge and that hides them nicely.

This is way more complicated than I expected. I opened it in Motion to study it, and I get the resizing of the drop zone along on the X axis to approximate the Fit option, but there's also a mask in there and I'm curious why that was necessary. Without that would the extra space have not been transparent?

Thanks both for the useful little Generator, and also for the stuff I'll learn from this!

There is already a free effect that comes with FxFactory called Andy's Elastic Aspect that does this.

That is excellent. Thanks for the heads up.

"There is nothing new under the sun" - King Soloman, Ecclesiastes 1:9

Yes, I already have Elastic Aspect and it also offers a way to deal with 4:3 footage, but it's not really the same thing and gives quite a different look.

Ahh I found the secrete to do it as an effect. Set the spacial conform to "fill" of the clip, and then the effect can simply scale the effect source. 75% for example.

Here is a super crude example, that is a starting point.




(just updated this after initially posting. I had the wrong percentage for the main clip)

ddixon, the mask is for the feather.

That elastic vid - I understand now. Original poster was looking for equivalent to what QT does/did for 'panoramic'. Bit different to what I understood but I imagine my file might be useful to some.

I know this is an old topic, but I am making some movies with 4:3 content (in an 16:9 project). I am duplicating the 4:3 clips as an underneath connected clip with spatial conform "fill" and throw in a blur. I tried (as a Motion-noob) something in Motion but I don't get it.

I tried one of the drop zone things above but that doesn't work, because of a work in progress? I don't use FxFactory...

The generator that robertdee created last summer (above in post #27850) worked for me.