16×9 on 4×3 sequence

[Andy Mees]

do you actually want to edit this as 16:9 in a 4:3 frame or as 16:9 in a 16:9 frame?

regrading your problem it would seem that although you intended to capture as DV PAL Anamorphic, in fact it captured as plain DV PAL

check your clip settings (one of the clips in the timeline that is displaying incorrectly) … select the clip and press Cmd-9 to open the Item Properties >> Format window. is there a check in the Anamorphic column?

[Tony Sarafoski]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for your prompt response.

My final output is going to be 8 bit uncompressed but in PAL 4×3. The footage I’ve been supplied on a HD was ingested via a DVCAM SDI Deck as PAL 8 bit uncompressed. Not sure if when ingesting via SDI you need to tell it that you want it captured as anamorphic or not. I’m just rendering a file right now, once thats done i’ll let you know if its ticked or not.

[Andy Mees]

that confirms the problem I think …

the footage was ingested from the DV deck as Uncompressed 8 bit PAL without first telling FCP that the incoming footage should be treated as Anamorphic 16:9

note : telling FCP to treat the footage as Anamorphic 16:9 does not change the captured media in any way, it is just metadata added to the ingested clip data that is stored in the FCP project file

the easy fix is to add that meta data now, after the fact, so that FCP can start treating this footage the way that you want it to. open up / scroll your project’s browser window in list view so that you can see the “Anamorphic” column running down next to your source clips. now click in that column for each clip and you will see that a check mark is added there. that check mark tells FCP to treat/display these clips as 16:9.

try it. take one of these clips to which you have added the anamorphic flag, and edit it into your 4:3 timeline. you should now see it correctly displaying letterboxed and with all in its correct aspect.

one thing you might want to consider: as all your footage is 16:9 you might like to edit the entire project as full frame 16:9 (using a sequence that is also flagged as Anamorphic) instead of editing the whole thing letterboxed. In that scenario you would simply nest your finished sequence into a 4:3 timeline as a final step to produce your 4:3 delivery master.

hope that helps
Andy

[Tony Sarafoski]

Andy thanks for taking the time.

I’ve checked to see if the Anamorphic 16:9 was tick which it was, bizarre if you as me.

Funny thing is I stumbled upon my solution just the other day.

Like I said in my previous post, I found a post that mention to change my distort settings to:

upper left from -360 to 480
upper right from 360 to 480
lower right from 360 to 480
lower left from -360 to -480

However the problem here was these setting where for a NTSC 4×3 video.

Now this is the funny part, I had to place an after effects graphic and same thing is seem squashing on the sides. So I double click the clip and went to the motion tab and noticed that my scale wasn’t set to 100% and aspect ratio was not 0% however the thing i noticed most was:

upper left was -512
upper right was 512
lower right was 512
lower left was -512

So once I reset my scale to 100% and aspect ratio to 0% the graphic was perfect. I then though if i set my uncompressed footage to 512, this would be the correct setting i’m after, well it was. So now my question is, how do you come up with 480 or 512? as being the correct figure?

[Kirill Volchinskiy]

Thanks Guys!