4:3 movie as undistorted, uncropped widescreen

[Emma Mcneill]

Stick the completed 4:3 export into a 16:9 sequence and then export it again as a 16:9 quicktime and you get the effect you want. Also, exporting DV as Uncompressed is a waste of time since all your doing is adding more to the bitrate.

Emma

[Quentin Block]

Thanks, Emma.
RE:

[Don Greening]

[Quentin Block] “hat would be the best possible export setting without taking away quality OR adding unnecessary bitrate?”

Export using the same codec as your source video e.g. capture with DV NTSC 48k, edit and export using the same. You won’t see any quality difference. The only time you want to edit and export with something else is when you have lots of graphics which will benefit from a codec that uses less compression than DV NTSC.

– Don

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[Ben Holmes]

[Quentin Block] “first time I did this I exported from FCP as 8 bit uncompressed Quicktime, then Compressed it (with Compressor), brought into DVDSP and created the files for the DVD.”

Quentin – just ‘export using compressor’ straight from the timeline in FCP – saving an uneccessary export step with no benefit to quality.

If your footage track in DVDSP is specified as 4:3, the DVD player should, by default play it back that way, and the screen should as well. If it’s not then either the DVD player settings are wrong/odd or DVDSP thinks the track is 16:9. You can specify in DVDSP how a DVD Player set to 4:3 will deal with each track in your DVDSP project – 16:9 letterbox / pan-scan or 4:3. Try altering these settings – they appear when you select the track itself in the outline window (normally top right in DVDSP).

Hope this helps.

Ben

[Quentin Block]

Hi Ben,
RE: “just ‘export using compressor’ straight from the timeline in FCP – saving an unnecessary export step with no benefit to quality.”
When I tried this before, I got all kinds of field issues (horizontal lines as if field render was screwed up). Not sure why…

The DVD player (it’s an 8″ tablet portable DVD player, all self-contained like you use in a car…) automatically defaults on widescreen setting when you turn it on and stretches the 4×3 video horizontally to fit.
There does not seem to be any way to re-set this except to manually press the ‘WIDE’ button on the player (which toggles between 4:3 and wide). I can set the player from the setup menu – TV display – to 16:9 or 3:4LB or PS, but any 4:3 footage is always stretched (?!). The only way I’ve found to ‘cheat’ it is to export from FCP as an anamorphic comp with black bars on the sides (makes a 720×480 movie).
Then compress it to mpeg2 within Compressor or DVDSP which gives me a very squished looking 640×480 movie with bars on the sides. When I make this into a DVD (via DVDSP) and play it in the player set at 16:9, it seems to look OK.
Question: Am I losing image quality by squishing my anamorphic movie (720 width) into 640 width, then re-stretching it in the DVD player? Does DVDSP always put out its assets as 640×480 format?
It just doesn’t seem quite right…

I tried compressing the anamorphic movie (from FCP) in Compressor as MPEG2 60 min FastEncode Widescreen, and got a 720×404 m2v movie. Not sure what that was all about…
Should I try working with that in DVDSP?
You can see I’m challenged by this. Any more insight would be appreciated.
Thanks and regards!

[Emma Mcneill]

if you want it to be consistent then slot the 4:3 into a 16:9. and either export or just run it right out through compressor.

sometimes the audio slips out of sync when run out of FCP through compressor though, that may just be on the PAL version minds you.

Emma