• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  4:3 film master with letterboxing

  Posted by Mark Greenberg on November 15, 2013 at 8:59 pm

  Hello,

  I was given a 4:3 betacam master of a film to encode for DVD. The film is 4:3 with letterboxing. Why would a filmmaker do this? I need to author a DVD, the film is going to be letterboxed and pillarboxed when displayed on hdtv’s. Is cropping/scaling my only solution?

  Thanks,
  MAG

  Shane Ross replied 12 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Shane Ross

  November 15, 2013 at 10:42 pm

  [Mark Greenberg] “Why would a filmmaker do this?”

  Perhaps it was done before HD came along. This is what we did back then. Digibeta was the highest end format, and you letterboxed it. So if the film was done 6 or more years ago…this was the norm.

  [Mark Greenberg] ” I need to author a DVD, the film is going to be letterboxed and pillarboxed when displayed on hdtv’s. Is cropping/scaling my only solution?”

  No…don’t crop and scale. Make a letterboxed DVD. The DVD player or TV will scale it. My Star Wars DVDs are letterboxed…I know because the subtitling in the GREEDO section appears in the black. My DVD player scales this fine. YOu are making an SD DVD after all.

  Shane
  Little Frog Post
  Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

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