4×3 in a 16×9 frame

[Bob Cole]

[Frantic] “a movie house that only take widescreen”

First, make sure of that assumption. If the movie house plays your movie off a DVD then the DVD player’s automatic mode may well play your 4:3 spot correctly, i.e. so that it appears in the middle of the screen, with nothing projected on the side “columns.” This is the highest quality solution.

Otherwise it gets more complicated. I haven’t done this yet in FCP so others should guide you on this, but if you are creating an NTSC flavor “16:9” DVD-R, you will be making an anamorphic 720×480 pixel image, either with black columns on left and right, or blowing up your 4:3 to fill the wider frame.

— Bob C

[George Orallo]

Thanks guys,
I know that the delivery will be a QT through our FTP and what I’m after is

the 4×3 image to fit on the 16×9 screen from top to bottom, thereby leaving the right and left portions of the screen empty

Thanks

George

[Neil Ryan]

George,
I’d place the existing Sequence in the Source/Viewer, make a new sequence with the same settings, only check the ‘anamorphic’ box and cut the 4:3 seq into it; (it will automatically pillarbox)
Render;
export as appropriate.

let us know how you got …
FCP handles going mixing of 4:3 and 16:9 well either way, I feel.
Neil.