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DV-NTSC Displayed At Clean Aperture, Production Aperture, & Encoded Pixels
When I was using Quicktime Player 7 with Tiger, looking at DV, using Properties’ Conform aperture settings under Presentation made perfect sense. At actual size, Clean aperture displayed the video at 640 x 480. Production aperture displayed the video at 654 x 480, and you could visually see the display as slightly wider than Clean, revealing additional image or non-picture (depending on the source) on the left and right. And Encoded Pixels displayed the image horizontally stretched to 720 x 480, including the extra image or non-picture on the left and right.
Ever since I started using Snow Leopard on a new iMac, this behavior in Quicktime Player 7 has changed. The sizes are the same, as described above. But the display of the image is inconsistent between the settings, and makes no sense. Sometimes the Clean aperture setting will display the full Production aperture (i.e., including non-picture on the left and right) squeezed into the 640 x 480 size. Sometimes the Production aperture setting will display only the Clean aperture part of the image ever-so-slightly stretched to the 654 x 480 size. And sometimes the Encoded Pixels setting will display only the Clean aperture part of the image stretched to the 720 x 480 size.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Perhaps more importantly, can I work with these different presentations (properly) from within FCPX?
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9 Replies
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The presentation formats make no difference to FCP, which always works with the encoded pixel aspect ratio, and adjusts for display within the application.
All the best,
Tom
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Coming in 2011 “Complete Training for FCPX” from Class on Demand
“Final Cut Pro X for iMovie and Final Cut Express Users” from Focal Press -
I have some DV footage (the first and only clip) in a FCPX project. The material is digitized analog Hi8, and I can see black slivers on the left and right in FCPX.
When I use Share . . . Apple Devices . . . Mac & PC, the resulting ADV video includes the black slivers in the 640 x 480 display with Quicktime Player 10. In other words, it seems to be squeezing the production aperture pixels into the clean aperture size.
When displaying the original DV with Quicktime Player 10 (FCPX not involved), the clean aperture is displayed properly in the 640 x 480 size.
Tom, will you please try it with some of your old DV footage? Look carefully at the left and right edges of the image.
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Black edging is common on digitized analog media. There is no black edging on normal DV media displayed in QT. I think your problem is with the QT X player.
All the best,
Tom
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Coming in 2011 “Complete Training for FCPX” from Class on Demand
“Final Cut Pro X for iMovie and Final Cut Express Users” from Focal Press -
In my experience with digitally born DV, a little additional image on the left and right sides is revealed by displaying production aperture (as opposed to the aforementioned black in digitized analog material.)
I have your Damine.mov file with DV from your Final Cut Express Editing Workshop DVD-ROM on my hard drive. Just now, I’ve compared the first frame displayed with Quicktime Player 10, with the same frame displayed within FCPX after importing the file into a new event. I can see a little additional image on the left and right sides in FCPX. For example, take the silver and black car in the lower left part of the frame. In the Quicktime Player 10 display, no headlight on the car is visible, due to (I believe) the display being properly cropped to clean aperture. From within FCPX, one headlight on the car is visible.
I created a new project and dragged the Damine.mov clip to it. Then, I immediately exported the whole thing using Share . . . Apple Devices . . . Mac & PC.
Next, I lined up Damine.mov on top of the new .mp4 file on my monitor, displaying the first frame of both in actual size with Quicktime Player 10. I can see they are both the same width; Inspector shows both of them as 640 x 480. In the display of the .mp4 file, I can see the additional image on the left and right sides, and I can see the headlight on the car in the lower left.
One has to be wrong; I believe it is the .mp4 file.
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I believe it’s the QT X player. When viewed on a computer the image should display the full raster. There should be zero cutoff. Any masking should be done on a television display.
All the best,
Tom
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Coming in 2011 “Complete Training for FCPX” from Class on Demand
“Final Cut Pro X for iMovie and Final Cut Express Users” from Focal Press -
“Clean aperture” is not the same thing as “Safe Action” and “Safe Title” areas.
Televisions do additional masking within “clean aperture”.
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To simplify FCP works in and exports production aperture. It does not support clean aperture internally nor on export, nor has any previous version.
All the best,
Tom
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Coming in 2011 “Complete Training for FCPX” from Class on Demand
“Final Cut Pro X for iMovie and Final Cut Express Users” from Focal Press -
To me, Final Cut Pro X seems to correctly support production aperture of DV-NTSC, which is good. My imported DV video is displayed slightly wider then 4:3, which I believe is correct. When the DV’s full pixel array contains black columns on the left and right sides, they are outside the 4:3 image, which I believe is correct.
Quicktime Player 7’s behavior in Snow Leopard has changed again since my initial post in this thread, perhaps because of an update. Now, regardless of the Presentation setting (clean aperture, production aperture, or encoded pixels), it seems to be displaying only the pixels that are supposed to represent clean aperture from the source pixel array. (This is obvious when black columns on left and right, previously displayed from the same DV, are no longer revealed in the production and encoded pixels presentations.) Therefore, I believe now only the clean aperture presentation is correct.
Quicktime Player 10 apparently only supports clean aperture presentation. I have now noticed is does indeed crop ever-so-slightly too tightly, upon selecting the pixels from the source pixel array that are supposed to represent clean aperture. Tom, perhaps this is what you were alluding to. However, this is a separate issue from the issue of FCP not supporting clean aperture in its export presets, and does not account for anything I said about that.
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Looks to me that FCPX does support clean aperture, as follows:
Select a project with NTSC SD 720×480 video properties in the Project Library. Show the Inspector and Properties. Click Modify Project Properties (via the wrench in the lower right corner of the Inspector). Video Properties can be changed to Format: Other; Resolution: 640×480.
As a frame of the video is displayed from the Project Library in the Viewer at 100%, I can see it being cropped from production aperture to clean aperture before my eyes.
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