Vertical Clips Distorted in iMovie--How Can I Avoid the Distortion???

Question

I have a number of vertical clips (.mov) that I would like to include in a movie with the majority of clips which are horizontal. Although the vertical clips play fine (if I just play them on my computer), they become distorted when I import them into iMovie. iMovie changes their aspect ratio rather than scales them down to fit (leaving black bars on the left and right).
Any ideas on what I can do to keep the original aspect ration with vertical orientation so that everyone in the movie does not look short and fat (the result of the distortion).
Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

David pointed to some excellent sites to help explain masks. QuickTime lets you do lots of things with masks, so it's not surprising your task is a bit different than most I saw there. To complicate matters, the QuickTime 7 user interface is different than the QT interface shown in those sites.
Technically, a mask allows you to remove a portion of the video image. That's not exactly your goal if I understand it. Instead, you want to add to the image to prevent iMovie from resizing your vertically-shaped video when you import it. You want to make your video the normal size and shape so iMovie won't resize it, right?
To do that, you need to place your vertical video in front of a black background that's the "proper" size. Essentially, you need to build a video sandwich that's the proper size for iMovie. When iMovie imports this video sandwich, it will accept it "as is" instead of resizing it. Then your video will play vertically in iMovie against a black background.
Here's how:
(This requires QuickTime Pro. These instructions are for QuickTime 7.):
• In any graphics program, create a black image that's 640x480. Save it as a PICT. (I will assume your video is smaller than 640x480. If it's not, please say.)
• In the Finder, make a duplicate of your vertical movie.
• Open the duplicate in QuickTime Pro. From now on, we'll refer to this as "Vertical Movie".
• Open the PICT in QT Pro. Select Edit > Copy. Close the PICT. The black picture is now on the Mac Clipboard.
• Activate the Vertical Movie window. Choose Edit > Select All.
• To add the black background to Vertical Movie, choose Edit > Add To Selection and Scale. That Pastes the PICT as a new layer which plays exactly the same duration as the current selection in the movie. (That's why we Selected All.)
• The black layer now covers the video so you can't see it, and the playhead is at the end of the movie.
• Move the playhead to the start of the movie.
• To be able to see the video, we need to bring it forward in front of the black layer. To do that, choose Window > Show Movie Properties. This window shows the properties of each track in the movie, including Video Track 1 (your vertical video) and Video Track 2 (the black layer).
• Click on "Video Track 1". Click on the "Visual Settings" tab below the track list.
• At the bottom of the window change the Layer setting by clicking on the DOWN arrow just right of the Layer textbox. You want to make the Layer number smaller. -2 will probably do it. When the layer is correct, the video layer will appear. (If it doesn't appear, keep fiddling with the Layer until it does.)
• If the video layer isn't centered against the black background, change its Offset settings so it is centered.
• Save Vertical Movie. You've built your sandwich.
• To make a movie iMovie will love, export the Vertical Movie sandwich to a DV Stream. To do that, choose File > Export. In the top popUp menu (at the bottom of the window) choose "Movie to DV Stream". In the bottom popUp, choose "DV NTSC 48 kHz". Assign a name and Save.
(Exporting "flattens" the movie so the vertical video and the black background merge into a single layer.)
• Import the DV Stream to iMovie.
Karl