Smart Conform in Final Cut Pro 11

A somewhat hidden feature in Final Cut Pro 11 is Smart Conform. Apple describes this as an easy way to “make social media-friendly versions of projects in square or vertical formats.”

Apple Help states: “Smart Conform analyzes the contents of selected clips in a project and automatically adjusts the framing for each clip based on the specific video content, such as faces or other areas of visual interest, so these important elements are not left outside the video frame.

“Smart Conform is especially useful for repurposing projects created with standard widescreen or HD aspect ratios, such as those for film or TV, to make versions in different aspect ratios for social media.”

This feature first appeared in FCP 10.5.1 in 2021 and Apple has steadily improved it since. There are two ways we can use Smart Conform:

  1. On an already-edited project
  2. On individual clips.

NOTE: Smart Conform works really well with talking-head video. However, it has problems with graphics, titles and framing where an essential visual element is not a person talking. I’ll illustrate these issues as we go along.

SMART CONFORM — PROJECTS

Here’s a short project from my 2024 NAB Show coverage last spring. This 90-second clip has eight shots, five titles and an opening graphic.

In the Browser, right-click the name of the project you want to conform and choose Duplicate Project As.

Here’s the secret step. When this dialog appears:

NOTE: If you shot HD (1920 x 1080), pick a vertical size of 720 x 1280. This zooms the source footage up about 18%, which will blur it slightly, but mostly preserve image quality. If you shot UHD/4K (3840 x 2160), pick 1080 x 1920. This will reduce your image size about 12%, retaining the greatest image quality.

To avoid image degradation, minimize scaling as much as possible.

Depending upon the number of clips in your original project, FCP will take a few seconds to a few minutes to scale and crop your media.

For example, here’s an original shot.

Here’s the reframed shot. Notice the image was scaled slightly larger, cropped, and the title was lost.

Here’s the original opening graphic.

Here’s the conformed graphic. Using Smart Conform, you’ll need to replace all your titles and full-screen graphics because the original media was cropped.

HOWEVER, and this is a key point, the talking head video is simply repositioned and, if necessary, scaled.

So, if you don’t like the framing FCP created…

You can adjust either horizontal or vertical position in the Video Inspector. I like this adjustment feature a LOT!

SMART CONFORM — CLIPS

Let’s say you only have a clip or two that need to be conformed, for example you need to integrate a horizontal shot into a vertical timeline or vice versa. Here’s how.

Here’s a horizontal clip in a vertical timeline that needs to be conformed to vertical.

Select the timeline clip (you can’t do this to clips in the Browser), then choose Modify > Smart Conform. Final Cut will conform the clip to match the rest of the project in the timeline.

NOTE: Again, you can still adjust position settings in the Video Inspector if you don’t like the resulting framing.

During my latest vacation, I toured several countries in SouthEast Asia. This shot is from a canal boat cruise in Bangkok, Thailand.

This shot, of a Buddhist temple alongside the canal, is the wrong aspect ratio. Once again, I edit it into the timeline and choose Modify > Smart Conform.

This is the result. What FCP did is switch Spatial Conform from Fit to Fill; which zooms into the center of the image.

By adjusting the Position settings in the Video Inspector, I can create a better framed shot. However, when conforming vertical clips into a horizontal timeline, the image is ALWAYS zoomed it.

NOTE: Many vertical shots are integrated into a horizontal timeline by zooming into the shot and blurring it as a background, then adding the full vertical shot on top of it. Smart Conform doesn’t do that. However, there are plugins that can do that automatically or you could create a custom effect that does the same thing in Motion.

SUMMARY

What I like best about Smart Conform is that it can quickly take a horizontal project and convert it to vertical. This allows quickly converting a talking-head interview for social media in just seconds.

However, there are severe limitations on how titles and graphics are handled, as well as the challenges of conforming vertical media to a horizontal timeline. This means  that there will still be times where you will need to make manual adjustments once the conform is complete.


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