-
DVPAL 16:9 Exports not working
Hi, my 16:9 exports don’t seem to be working anymore. I use dv pal anamorphic mostly (720×576 Anamorphic) and capture and work with it as such. I export to quicktime dvpal anamorphic and then when i look at my footage in quicktime (even cinema tools) its square. The info on my quicktime says ‘dv pal 720×576 (1024×576)’ however it says the native dimensions are 720×576. Its all very frustrating as its been working fine for me for ages and now this past month i don’t know whats gone wrong. Any ideas?
-
3 Replies
-
Sorry about the double post. Ok I’ve been a few hours trying to figure this out by myself and had no luck and i have to have twelve tens minute clips for a client in the morning. The imported footage reads as 720×576 with the anamorphic box checked, my sequence is exactly the same and when i export this as the same, even when i customise and do these settings, I always get 4:3 when i open the exported file up in QT. However when i open the rushes in the capture scratch it comes up 16:9 in QT. What am I missing here? I’ve really tried every combination of export. Do I need to export 1024×576? Thast seems wrong to me because the format of the footage inside fcp reads as 720×576. Oh the joy of editing.
-
Ok I messed about with quicktime for a while and discovered that after exporting each sequence DV PAL Anamorphic from fcp, then open each export in Quick Time, open up the vidoe properties and changed the frame size to 1024×576 I now have 16:9 quicktimes.However, these exports seem identical in QT to the original captured rushes except when I import them back into fcp… the new files are reading as 1024×576 and if i uncheck the anamorphic box they fit fine into my sequence, in the info for the rushes the info is 720×576 with anamorphic checked. So i’m a bit worried, when the guy I have to give these to goes to burn them onto a dvd will the 1024 converted files look all stretched or what? I suppose I’m just asking if anyone has had much experience with all of this and could maybe cast some light and a tip or two? Head is wrecked with this.
-
Your are not mad!
it is actually quite easy when you know what is happening.
PAL Standard definition is 720×576, no matter if 4-3 aspect ratio or 16-9 ratio.
Only difference between 4-3 and 16-9 is the shape of each pixel in the matrix. This is the reason why a 16-9 aspect ratio frame looks stretch on a 4-3 ratio TV.
Now your QuickTime player works basically like a TV in this regard. If you open a 720×576 sized PAL SD file in QT the player doesn’t know what aspect ratio of your pixels are as this is not embedded in the metadata of the .mov file. Also the QT has no simple ’16-9′ button to display a 16-9 720×576 file correctly because it basically operates with displaying every pixel always as a square one. So you found out correctly that you have to change the properties to 1024×576 to get the proper aspect ratio (which equals 16-9 in square pixels). Now this change in the Quicktime file only changes the way it is displayed not the actual file itself (which is still 720×576 with 16-9 pixel aspect ratio).
FCP has the 16-9 ‘button’ hence you don’t need to fiddle with the display size.
If you change the display size as you did and give this modified .mov file to somebody else it really depends on the software they are using. Does it correctly handle the aspect ratio?
Most likely scenario is that they have to tell their software that it should interpret the 720×576 pixels as 16-9 aspect ratio.
In the end of the day it is only a matter how you ‘display’ the 720×576 pixels of your PAL SD frame.As I’m not a technician some technical things might be incorrect and everybody feel free to correct me.
Hope this helps.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up