Punching in on 1080p footage in a 720p project?

So I hear people talking about 4k footage and how amazing it is that you can punch in / zoom in and select part of the frame that gives you a nice 1080p shot getting rid of edges you don't want...

So my question is if I have some 1080p footage but my project is in 720p how do I punch in?

How do I zoom in / crop in to reframe my shot getting rid of the edges?

I get that I can put the 1080p footage on my timeline and open the inspector and use the transform feature and increase the scale percentage but how do I know when I've scaled in to exactly 1280x720 pixels of my original 1080 footage.

I don't want to scale in too much and have final cut stretching pixels but I don't want to not scale in enough and not use the zoom to the full extent.

I guess I'm asking how do you know your cutting an exact 1280 x 720 frame out of a 1920x1080 original frame?

Many thanks,

G

In the Inspector, Video section, very bottom, look for Spacial Conform. Set it to "None", then the clip will be its native size.

Just a little addition to BenB's solid advice: once you do what he said, you just have to drag around in the viewer to select the part of the image you want. There is no calculation or guessing needed.
I use this all the time. My camcorder records in 1080p and I choose to output in 720p for several reasons. This allows for easily adjusting the framing in post (see the picture).

lichinho wrote: … (see the picture).… 

sorry for thread-jacking, but

Never realized, you're editing soccer-games too, Luis??
hey, another one!! cool …

Yes, I have been editing soccer-games, too... or rather, I should say, *football* games
I can't do multicam editing, though. I have to do it with just one camera.
You can't discern from the screenshot, but my son is about to score a nice goal

lichinho wrote: … my son is about to score a nice goal

lobbing the ball over the keeper (…who doesn't stand on his line, stupido!), and 'his' defender in red too far away to attack him - excellence, Miguel! :silly:

… my son plays left defender, rarely shooting goals ...
His best is meanwhile seven years (gosh!!) ago
ohh, miniDV, iMovie ... looong time ago.
meanwhile, Daddy's using HD, the Prince Of Cool got a lil' older
… but I'm still utilizing my same old music-tracks LOL :silly: