2.35:1 Matte in VIEWER

Anyway to have a 2.35 matte in the viewer? I don't want to apply a matte after a shot is in the timeline. I want to see it when viewing from the event.

You'd have to apply it to the clip timeline, then. Right-click in Browser, select "Open in Timeline".

You could open a clip in the timeline and apply the effect to the video.

I want to see it while viewing before I put it in the timeline and It'd be a pain to apply it to each clip.

Is there really no other solution besides gaff tape over my screen? Davinci Resolve has a matte for its viewer window.

"I want to see it while viewing before I put it in the timeline and It'd be a pain to apply it to each clip."

You don't need to apply it to each clip. Just grab an adjustment layer, put it above the clips in the timeline, and crop it to whatever you want. If you're cropping full frame pix you're probably gonna need to reposition shots anyway, it makes more sense to do it in the timeline rather than applying a generic crop to everything in the viewer. You can make one in Motion, or just DL this:

blog.alex4d.com/2012/03/19/adjustment-layer-fcpx-effect/

Thanks for the reply but the original post says "I don't want to apply a matte after a shot is in the timeline". An adjustment layer can only be applied in a project or timeline. Im aware of this method.

I want to view 2.35 while I favorite clips in the event. Apple should implement a viewer matte option.

Matthew wrote: Thanks for the reply but the original post says "I don't want to apply a matte after a shot is in the timeline". An adjustment layer can only be applied in a project or timeline. Im aware of this method.

I want to view 2.35 while I favorite clips in the event. Apple should implement a viewer matte option.

Gotcha. Well, then the workaround would be as stated above... right click master clip in Event, open in timeline, crop to taste. And send feedback to Apple if you haven't....

Have you used feedback?

No, I haven't used feedback before.

It would be helpful because one of my editors tends to cut things if there is a distracting element in the 16x9 viewer that may not be there in the 2.35 crop. (live event footage)

The feature that would be great would be to add custom overlays in the viewers. So you could have custom safe areas, or matts, or whatever.

It's doable with XML. Hang tight and I'll come back with more details.

-Harry

I went ahead a recorded a quick video tutorial...hope it's helpful although XML stuff can get kind of dense:

(Watch in 1080 full screen so you can see the details of editing the XML more clearly)



Best,

-Harry

Dude, you're a gem. Thank you for taking the time to make the tutorial. You're the only person on the internet with a solution.

Very impressive. That's really a useful function. It might be worth doing it with the Letterbox effect so when you add it to the project you can go inside the clip and adjust the offset.

Just a note: using the letterbox effect is kind of a crop function as well, in that it shows transparency around the image, not actual black.

My pleasure Matthew - glad it's helpful!

To Tom's point - I should have mentioned that yes, you really can put just about any filter/transformation and this technique should work. That said, I have found in my minimal testing that transformation tend to perform better than filters on viewer clips, but the XML part itself will still work.