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16:9 or 4:3 letterbox for film festivals
I am finishing a documentary which was originally shot for TV in standard def 4×3 on the DVX100, and also contains a bunch of 4×3 old archival video. It’s taken on a new additional life for film festivals, and we’d now like to show our full-length version in a widescreen aspect ratio. I know I will have to re-frame many shots…
Should I edit my sequence in 16×9 or 4×3 letterbox? That is, should I blow up the footage 33.33% via a plugin like Resizer or just letterbox it in 4×3? This will be primarily for film festival theatrical video projection, not for home TV (except I guess for festival pre-screeners). How does a typical video projection system in a theater handle the two formats? Would the 4:3 letterboxed be physically smaller on the big screen than 16×9?
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2 Replies
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Well… That is a loaded question.
As for your issue, since you are working in standard def and have all of your footage captured. I would edit in 4×3 letterbox since alot of tape decks aren’t going to understand your anamorphic 16×9 master without lots of setup.
If a film festival has to do setup for your feature, they will usually pass on it as they have some many entries they would never get done with the judging.
Before doing anything, check with the festival for their standards.
I would suggest that if you need a 16×9 version, I would create a new timeline, remove any CG and have it upconverted to HD properly by someone with high end equipment or if you have a BlackMagic or AJA card, you can uprez it yourself to HD output using hardware scaling. Then you can capture you feature in HD 16×9 and place the CG back into your program (at proper HD sizing).
Using software to upscale any footage that will be projected is asking for trouble. Any artifacts that are in the video will definitely be seen on large screen projection.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com
https://blogs.creativecow.net/waynecarey -
Thanks– that is very helpful. I’ve screened other films in 16×9 anamorphic on DVCAM at other film festivals, but I’m sure you’re right, best to find out what they can do first. To make matters even more complicated, we have a ton of photo stills with animated moves on them. If we did a 16×9 sequence, we could re-import them at a higher number of pixels, yes?
But from what you are saying it sounds like that advantage would be outweighed by the overall much higher quality of an upres via a high end machine for the video footage… So 4×3 letterbox for everything is best…
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