16:9 questions

[Michael Sacci]

1. Sounds like this is true 16:9 footage, don’t do this with motion tab setting. Make sure your timeline is 16:9 anamorphic and then click the anamorphic column for the clip in the browser. Then place on timeline.

2. If you have a 4:3 TV is has to have a 16:9 options, new Sony and Toshiba has this mode and most production NTSC monitor have a 4:3/16:9 switch. If your TV doesn’t have this mode you would need a video card that will do the letterboxing for you (does like a DVD player does)

3. As long as you have a 16:9 timeline it will be right on the tape but nothing auto recognizes 16:9 on a tape you have to set up your capture.

[Chet Wesley]

In that case, is there any difference between 16:9 footage that has been squished to 4:3 and 16:9 footage printed from a 16:9 anamorphic sequence to a 4:3 tape stock?

[Michael Sacci]

There is really no such thing as 4:3 or 16:9 on tape. SD tape is SD tape, it is always 720×480 then the monitor much match the aspect ratio of those pixels to the way that it was shoot.

16:9 displays correctly at 1.2 and 4:3 at .9.

As long as you keep things the same all the way through the editing process you are good. The problem is there is nothing you can do (short of letterboxing) that will make a 16:9 sequence recorded to tape play-out to a 4:3 TV and not squash it. Either the TV needs to have a 16:9 mode or you have to letterbox the footage.

A 16:9 DVD looks correctly because the play is in fact letterboxing the video on the fly.

[Chet Wesley]

The thing is that final cut DID automatically recognize this video as 16:9 once it was captured. I did not set anything to 16:9 when capturing, and the footage fills the 720×480 frame on the tape, yet when you bring up the video in the viewer, it displays it in 16:9.

Also, my concern is not so much how it will come out on a monitor as whether it will capture automatically to 16:9. Though, if it doesn’t the person on the other end can always change the clip settings.

[Michael Sacci]

Well, all I can say it I have never seen FCP automatically sense 16:9 nor do I know any deck, DV, Beta or Dbeta that can flag that the footage is 16:9. If I’m wrong I stand corrected but I don’t think I’m wring. My guess is you just happen to choose the right preset (one that was anamorphic)

[Chet Wesley]

Thank you for your advice.

The strange thing is that I did not know the footage was supposed to be 16:9 until after I had it in the computer and I was looking at it more closely, so I doubt I made the choice purposely, though maybe it was just good luck(?).

Thanks again.

[Michael Sacci]

one thing, this is about the only setting that it is no big deal if you have it wrong on capture, it can be changed after the fact, but you do need to change it before you start placing it in the timeline.

[Steve Beebe]

I think the number you are looking for is -33.33

but I might not understand your question..this is how I manually unsqueeze my video-resulting in a 16×9 letterbox image

s

[Jason Porthouse]

Chet,

This vexes more editors than just about anything I know.

Read Michael’s post carefully, and play with the settings for a while -it gets easier.

With SD footage, there is only one frame size for NTSC (720×486) and one for PAL (720×576). Within that frame size you have 4:3 (looks fine on a 4:3 monitor) and 16:9 (looks ‘Squished’ – BTW I think this should be a universal technical term – on a 4:3 monitor).

The ‘Anamorphic’ flag on your bin view tells FCP that the *clip* is anamorphic (‘squished’) or not. The button on your sequence settings tells FCP whether the sequence is anamorphic or not. It doesn’t affect the frame size, merely the aspect ratio – effectively saying ‘take this footage at 720×576 (PAL) and display it as widescreen’ – stretch it out in other words. Simply put, it does this by interpreting each ‘pixel’ as oblong instead of square, so although there are still 720 of them across, they are wider, hence appearing as 16:9.

HTH,

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Chet Wesley]

Yes, that was my first question, thanks for answering it, because I may need to do that as well anyway, independent of the issues of laying to tape.