Cropping Photos to Use with iMovie?

Hello group-
I've been away a while and need to be reminded of something basic: When inserting photos from my iPhoto library into a new iMovie project, do I FIRST need to crop/constrain the photos in that 4 x 3 (DVD) shape? In other words, before I drag a photo into my movie project, must it first have the 4X3 crop?
A related question: The idea of cropping 800 or so photos in that 4 X 3 shape is daunting. Plus -- I wouldn't want the photos to retain that cropping indefinitely. Does anyone have any ideas about shortcuts here? Actually, I just thought of one way to manage this issue: I'll duplicate the entire folder of photos that I want to use in the movie. I'll crop those photos as needed for the movie. Once I'm done with the movie, I'll delete the second folder of photos leaving me with my original folder of photos with their unconstrained original dimensions.
Is that the easiest/best way to go?
Thanks in advance for your help. Hello to Lennart!
Diana

Hello Diana and welcome back.
You could set Ken Burns to do a slight zoom, just enough to avoid the black bars on the photo. Play around with one uncropped photo until you are satisfied. Then import the rest with the same setting.
The above works only if the subject is (more or less) centered in the picture. If the subject isn't centered, you need to crop 4:3 and import without any zooming in Ken Burns. Hopefully that's just a few of the 800 pictures.
My new digital camera takes 4:3 pictures, so those are not any problem. But all my old scanned ones are 3:2. And I have hundreds (if not thousands) that are not yet scanned. Sigh.

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