How To Edit and Export Vertical Video In iMovie On a Mac

If you have vertical video shot on an iPhone that you wish to edit on a Mac in iMovie, usually this means cropping the video into horizontal format. But by using a trick in iMovie, you can both edit and export true vertical video.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to use vertical video using iMovie on your Mac.
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 600 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you could read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
So let's say you took some video with your iPhone but instead of holding it horizontally when you shot the video you held it vertically. Now you're stuck with vertical video. If you edit this video in iMovie you can't edit it in vertical format. You have to edit it in horizontal format. But there is a way in iMovie to edit vertical video and produce vertical video as a result. 
So here I am in iMovie. If I go to create a new project you'll see there are two options, Movie and Trailer. There's actually a third option that we're going to see in a minute. If I choose Movie, as I normally would, I get a normal movie here and I can drag and drop into it some vertical video shot on the iPhone. So now you could see the vertical video here in a horizontal space. I've got black bars on the left and the right. If I go to Export it using File, Share, File, or any of these options you could see I get black boxes on the left and black boxes on the right and the entire video fits in the middle. Let's export this one.
Now if we look at this video you could see I've got a horizontal video here with the vertical video imbedded in the middle of it. Now you can, if you want, click on Crop here, use Crop to Fill and select an area of this vertical video to enlarge and fill the horizontal frame and now you have horizontal video. But that doesn't always work because you're going to be cutting off lots of things at the top and bottom. So instead let's create the project in a different way.
Remember how I clicked Create New and you saw Movie and Trailer there. Well, there's a third option. If you go to the File menu you'll see New Movie and New Trailer. But you also see New App Preview. App Preview is something for app developers to be able to create previews for their iPhone apps, the ones that you see in the App Store when you go to look for apps and there's like a video preview of the app. This is one way to create those. But we can use it for regular videos as well.
I'll hit OK here and it looks like it creates a regular video project. But this is going to use vertical video. I still see a horizontal space here because this is how I have the parts of the window broken up. But if I drag that same video in here you could see the vertical video there and then I go to File, Share, File. You'll see here it looks a little bit different. It still gives me this square preview here with black bars on either side. But don't worry about that. Now you can choose Resolution here and this will give you the number of vertical pixels. I'll choose 1080p. Go to Next here and I'll Save this out.
So now you can see I've got my first test here which remember gives you a horizontal video with black bars on both sides. Now I have this vertical video here which is a true vertical video. You could see there is no black bars. The actual size of the video is vertical. If I go to Window, Show Movie Inspector I can see that it's 608 by 1080. So it's still using 1080 to represent the vertical number of lines. So it has shrunk my movie down a bit.
If instead I would have gone to Share, File, and then chosen 4K and exported that then I get this video here. If I do Window, Show Movie Inspector you could see it's 1920 high. 4K would actually be 2160 but it's not going to go above the maximum resolution. So it's actually 1080 by 1920 the original resolution of this video that I shot.
So that means I could go back in here and I could edit it. I could trim the video. I could add in other video clips if I want. I could do all the different things that I do in iMovie. When I produce this I'll get vertical video. I can bring in some horizontal video here and it's going to clip it to make it vertical video. So cropping out the left and right sides. The output is going to be vertical so that's what I'm going to see represented here.
Now I could also add things like titles and backgrounds and transitions just like I could in a regular iMovie. There's not going to be as many title choices because I'm stuck in this App Preview theme. So a lot of these title choices have to do with actually making app previews. The same with backgrounds. But don't worry about that. Because you could always go back out to Projects. Go into any horizontal project you want. Add a title here. So. for instance, I could use this title here. I could add it at the beginning. I could select it. Copy it. Go back to Projects. Go into my vertical video. My App Preview. I could place the cursor where I want and Paste. It will paste in the title just as it was in the horizontal video. So you can use Copy and Paste if you need to get to a title or background that's not available in the App Preview mode.
Now as I mentioned earlier this doesn't help you if you going to be distributing your video in a place where a horizontal video is expected. So playing it on a television set or uploading it to YouTube, for instance. But some places do accept vertical videos and videos of different dimensions. For instance a lot of different social networks will do that. Or maybe you're just going to be sending this or sharing this as a file and you want somebody to just get the vertical video as a file and be able to view it just like this on their Mac or PC. That is why you might want to edit and produce a vertical video rather than squeezing a vertical video into a horizontal space.

Comments: 10 Responses to “How To Edit and Export Vertical Video In iMovie On a Mac”

Rafa

4 years ago

I didn't find how to do it on iMovie. But now, thanks to you, I can do it properly.
Thank you so much!

Marcus

This helped me so much! thank you!

Wayne The Boat Guy

THIS is exactly what I needed! I like using iMovie on my desktop and I have been trying to use it to make YouTube shorts for my YouTube channel. You should share your video on YouTube because I'm sure lots of people are looking for this. Thank you!!

Mariano H Pardo

Man, you're the Master. Thanks a lot

Jack

Glad I did a Google search about this and found this new 2020 solution! The last solution I knew was to export the horizontal video and then open it on an iPhone. Within the Photos app on the iPhone you could crop the video out and get rid of the two black rectangles. Now this is much more neat!

Donna

I'm using an imac. When I go to share it, it does not give me the 1080 option. It's grayed out.

Gary Rosenzweig

Donna: Sounds like your source videos are less than 1080 resolution.

Myke

Gary, thanks for the video! Although, I record in 4K and it doesn't give me the option to export in 4k, only 1080. Any reason why?

Myke: When you created the project, was the first video you added in 4K? That first video sets the project resolution.

Yes it was. That I know for sure as I use iMovie to edit 4K with my GoPro. I want to edit my son’s first year and most of those videos are on my phone, shot in portrait and in 4k30fps.

Comments Closed.

How To Edit and Export Vertical Video In iMovie On a Mac

Comments: 10 Responses to “How To Edit and Export Vertical Video In iMovie On a Mac”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information