You're Doing Cinematic Black Bars Wrong in Final Cut Pro

You're making a cool little video, aren't you? Beautiful shots, sweet transitions, epic music. And you figure some cinematic black bars would make it look even more professional, right? Here's the thing: most people (me included, until I actually looked into this) add those black bars the wrong way, and it's costing you screen space.

What black bars actually are

Most phones and TVs display in a 16:9 aspect ratio (1600×900). The letterbox effect, those black bars, happens when a 21:9 image (the ratio used to show films in CinemaScope and most modern anamorphic formats) is placed on a 16:9 frame. Because 21:9 is wider, it gets squeezed in, leaving bars on the top and bottom. But on a widescreen device, that same video plays ultra-wide and fills the screen perfectly.

The mistake most people make

Here's the problem with slapping a letterbox effect or a black-bar PNG onto a 16:9 image: you're not actually going ultra-wide, you're just giving yourself less real estate in your shots. Take a travel video edited on a 16:9 timeline with bars plopped on top. The bars look great when your phone is vertical, but flip the phone horizontal and you're left with a ton of black space. Same deal watching on a widescreen TV or monitor. You're literally shrinking your own video.

The right way: edit on a cinematic timeline

Instead of faking bars, change your actual timeline resolution to a true cinematic aspect ratio. On a 1080p HD timeline, set your resolution to 1920×822. On a 4K timeline, set it to 3840×1644. Now the black bars show up vertically on a phone, and when you flip horizontal (or watch on a widescreen TV), your video gorgeously fills the whole screen.

You'll most likely need to scale your shots up a bit to fill the wider frame. In Final Cut Pro, change each clip's Spatial Conform to Fill. That makes your shots fill the screen and gives you some room to slide the position up or down to frame them how you want. Already started your project on 16:9? No problem, you can still switch the resolution and do all of these steps after the fact.