Simple border effect not visible after cropping in Final Cut Pro

The "problem" that exists in Final Cut is that Effects are layer ordered. Any effects you add to your media always come "first" (in Top - Down order for as many as you add) and THEN the effects applied from "Compositing" on down the Effects inspector are added AFTER the effects you applied. So for borders, that means they'll wrap around the original content and then Cropping will cut away everything that exists within the media's original "bounding box".

Cropping is a simple process and easily created as a user-added effect.

I have created (many) "simple border" effects with cropping.

You can download one that I think will serve your situation here:

Crop with Border 25

(Please let me know if and when you've downloaded it. If you need help installing it:

Installing Plugins for FCPX)

Here's how it works —

Parameters (some disclosure triangles are opened but will be closed when you first apply it):

The top three parameters are the Simple Border parameters. You can set the color, width and orientation (inside, overlap or outside.)

There is a Backing color to deal with any time the source media does not fit exactly into the crop area, usually only when rotation is used or Scale is less than 100%.

You can Rotate (Source Rotation) your media in 3D X Y and Z axes (dial down the disclosure triangle) — default is Z rotation. [NOTE: rotation on X or Y axes will affect the Horizontal and Vertical Offset's ability to "match edges".]

Source Scale will shrink or enlarge your media.

Crop Bottom Left: There is an OnScreen Control to easily and quickly crop your media for the Left and Bottom crops.

Crop Top Right: Another OSC to control Right and Top crops.

You cannot move the cropping controls outside your media bounds. Media bounds will depend on aspect ratio, like 16:9 HD, 9:16 (vertical), etc..

By default, as you Crop the media, the Center Point will "follow" the center of the cropped area.

Once your media is cropped and possibly scaled, you can use Horizontal and Vertical Offset controls to recenter/reorient your media (which offsets the Center - recropping will "track" the offsets as "center"... if you get my drift.) You cannot offset outside the bounds of the edges of the crop.

Experiment a little with the Offsets to get a feel for the different kinds of things you can do. If you animate your crop, you can go from full screen to the crop and back and you don't have to worry about the media "offsets" because at full screen, there are NO offsets to apply! In other words, you can set up your media so you can shrink down the view area and your setting will "follow" the progress of the animated crop, and at full screen, the original orientation is automatically restored.

Hide OSCs will remove the two OSCs from view when selected, or show them unselected.

Hope this helps!

Because the border is around the original clip, and is fixed. It doesn't readjust to any cropping you may do. Yeah, you'd think it would, but it never has.

When I need a border around a clip or image that is cropped, I use a Solid (Generators). Put it below the clip I cropped. Then crop that Solid generator to the right size to make a border.