Facebook video scaling/aspect ratio issue

[0344990]

Hi, everyone! I searched the forums first, and couldn't find any threads with my problem, so hopefully I can get my problem fixed with your help here.

I have a fairly old (~5 years) digital camera that records videos to .mov files. Without any editing, I went to upload an :11 second video to Facebook, and the resulting thumbnail has a large black gap on the right and bottom borders. Their site mentions they may have problems with the aspect ratio here and there, but I wanted to try and see how I can edit that video to where the thumbnail and video show up properly.



On the other hand, when I play the video in QuickTime and VLC, it displays fine, without the black space. Though, I did notice if I try to take a screenshot of it in VLC, it shows up with the black gap in paint when I paste the prntscrn image.

[Baldrick]

You could just try reconvert to avi with mp4camtoavi(or to mp4 with yamb, my mp4boxgui), upload it and see how it looks like.

[0344990]

I'll give those programs a shot as soon as I get to work this morning. I tried converting and uploading it as an .avi with other programs like rad yesterday, but it did the same thing. It's weird because Facebook says anything between 16:9 and 9:16 is good but that some videos just do that.

[poisondeathray]

What are the frame dimensions and aspect ratio of your original file? use mediainfo

It looks 4:3 from your screenshot. If you upload 4:3 content and they display in a 16:9 "window" for facebook, you will get black borders (think of it roughly as trying to put a small box into a large rectangle)

If you want to "center it" you can put black borders around your video before uploading (requires re-encoding) , or make it 16:9, but that requires cropping the image (lose parts of the image, also requires re-encoding)

[0344990]

Mediainfo says it is a 4:3 video. Is QuickTime pro the best/easiest way to convert it from a 4:3 to 16:9? If it can't do that, I'll just convert it using one of the programs listed above.

EDIT:

I just noticed if I use QT pro to export to an m4v file, it show up correctly in either 16:9 or 4:3 on Facebook. The thing is, I don't want to have to convert it if I don't have to. Apparently, when I try to save the mov file after changing the aspect ratio, only QT pro notices the change. For example, VLC plays it back in its 4:3 aspect ratio.

[0344990]

What programs are out there for Windows that will let me go in and edit the .mov file to remove the extra spacing? QT Pro will let me view it with a changed aspect ratio, but it wont save it as a .mov--only lets me export it.