Create Vertical Videos FASTER w/Final Cut Pro X Smart Conform

Are you creating vertical videos yet?

With the increase of content viewing on mobile phones, vertical videos are dominating the social media space.

What is Vertical Video?

Vertical videos are videos that are created in portrait style, facing straight up and down aka vertically, that are commonly used on Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels, Tik Tok, YouTube Shorts, etc.

This video takes up the whole screen of the phone, attracting someone’s full attention to watch the entire video and often time repeating reviewing the video.

Mobile devices are commonly used to create these natively vertical content pieces, no longer requiring your audience need to rotate their phone while watching your videos. 

Tik Tok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram/Facebook Stories, and Instagram Reels are some of the platforms leveraging fully native vertical videos.

These apps are commonly used with our mobile devices and vertical videos are dominating these apps.

Vertical videos are posted in a 9:16 frame which is 1080x1920p. When an image is posted that does not meet this frame guide, it's usually found with black bars around the areas void of content.

If you are wanting to turn your regular videos into vertical videos for your Tik Tok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and other social media accounts, Final Cut Pro X’s new Smart Conform tool will make converting your videos into vertical or even square format easier and faster.

What is Final Cut Pro X?

Final Cut Pro X is the latest iteration of the professional video editing software by Apple that of course is for MacOS only.

It's an incredibly powerful tool that full feature-length films have been created using, including many notable short films for full-time filmmakers.

The new Smart Conform tool is one of the latest additions added to the Final Cut Pro X list of features and it helps create vertical videos on Mac that much easier!

What is Smart Conform?

The new Final Cut Pro X Smart Conform tool can automatically reframe full videos into clips and automatically resize the video elements within that clip to fit the desired frame, including (of course) vertical videos or a 9:16 frame.

It is super useful in repurposing your videos, turning your regular videos into more attractive content ready for social media in just a few minutes.

Let me show you how I edit my regular video into a vertical format.

Let’s get started.

How to Convert Regular Video into Vertical Format

(I will use my latest video that was already exported to Final Cut Pro X.)

My goal is to take the intro part of the video and turn that into an Instagram Reel.

Since the original video was already created within Final Cut Pro X the next steps to conform the video and resize its elements for social media are super simple.

Go to Projects. 

Right-click on the file and select “Duplicate Project As”.

We are duplicating the file to create a new space for the video to be edited and not deleting the original video.

Input Project Name.

Select Vertical for the video format.

There are different variations when it comes to resolution and I always choose 2160x3840p similar to 4k or 2.5k video resolution simply because of the compression in editing.

Make sure to maintain your existing frame rate as it is with the original video, in this example, we're using a 29.97p.

Check the Smart Conform box to select. Selecting Smart Conform will convert the video from being 2160x3840p into a vertical video that has a project resolution of 1080x1920p. 

(If you don't see this within your version of Final Cut Pro X, you may need to update to the latest version which may require a system update if necessary.)

Click OK.

It will now start to convert the original video to the desired vertical video framing.

After that, go back to Projects, double click on the file that you created to see the converted video.

Now that the regular video was converted into a vertical format, let’s make sure that everything was centered and on the frame.

Go through the video to inspect the framing and make sure that all that you want to show is within the frame.

Click on the small square icon (at the left side, below the video) to bring up the video Inspector tool. This will allow you to move, rotate or realign parts of the video that may need to be reframed. 

Once selected you will see the frame's aspect of the video and gray out areas outside the grid to show what's included within the desired dimensions of your video and what's outside the framing from the original video.

If you want to slide and reframe a certain shot, click on the Inspector tool at the right side of the app (Transform – Position), hold and slide through the part of the shot that you want to show.

You can also drag and drop along the video, title, or text to move the image with your mouse to the desired position.

Continue scrubbing through the video and make your adjustments to the video.

Once you’re done making adjustments, click on the Square Inspector Icon again to lock in active changes and save the current positioning selected.

That's it! 

You now have a vertical video ready to share with your Instagram Reels, Stories, Tik Tok, or anywhere else.

Final Thoughts

Smart Conform is an amazing feature that will make content creation that much easier! 

One of the best things while using Final Cut Pro X's new Smart Conform tool is your existing edited videos and existing elements are already optimized and ready to go!

Even videos you've long since deleted from Final Cut Pro it's an easy drag and drop process to add finished videos to a new timeline and edit together micro-content to share on social media.

One of the ways I'm able to quickly record, edit and upload videos in a single day is by leveraging customized keyboard shortcuts in Final Cut Pro X.

These simple changes take minutes to change in Final Cut but give you hours back of your time turning longer editing functions into one button press efficient systems.

Up Next: Quick Shortcuts to Edit Faster in Final Cut Pro X for Beginners | Keyboard Shortcuts