4.5

132Compressor User Guide
Crop the source image
To remove part of the original source image, use the cropping controls in the Video
inspector. Depending on the “Frame size” setting (in the Video Properties section of
the Video inspector), cropping may or may not reveal black borders around the edges
of your clips.
1. In Compressor, do one of the following:
• In the batch area, click an output row to select a setting that’s been applied to a
job. With this method, the modifications you make will be used for outputting only
that job.
• In the Settings pane, select a custom setting from the Custom group. (If the Settings
pane is hidden, press Shift-Command-1.) With this method, the modifications you
make will be saved to the custom setting for future use.
2. In the inspector pane, click Video to open the Video inspector.
If the inspector pane is not visible, click the Inspector button in the upper-right
corner of the Compressor window.
3. In the Cropping & Padding section of the Video inspector, do one of the following:
• In the Cropping property, manually type a number in the Top, Bottom, Left, and Right
fields to crop the source image by that many pixels.
• Click the Cropping pop-up menu, then choose a preset aspect ratio.
Note: If the aspect ratio you choose doesn’t match the aspect ratio selected in the
“Frame size” pop-up menu (in the Video Properties section), you may see black bars
around the edges of your picture after the file is transcoded.
• Click the Cropping pop-up menu, then choose Letterbox Area of Source. This
instructs Compressor to detect the black edges around the image in your source file
and automatically enter crop values to match them. This option is useful if you want
to remove the letterbox area (the black bars above and below a widescreen image)
of a source media file.
• In the preview area, click the Comparison button and position the pointer over
the edges of the frame until the pointer changes to a Crop pointer, then drag inward
from the edge to crop the image.
Note: Cropped edges are visible only on the output side of the preview area (the
right side); the source media side of the preview area (the left side) doesn’t display
the crop effect.