Anamorphic footage?

[Neil Patience]

Anamorphic is a term that describes a distorted image that appears to look tall and thin when viewed normally.
For example I live in a PAL country so for me it works like this.
If someone shot some standard def footage anamorphic ally it would be 720×576 pixels in size. That is the same size as a 4×3 image. However when viewed that way everything looks tall and thin.
So in order to see the footage normally you need to distort it, so in this case if you resize it to 1024×576 it looks like a normal widescreen image and is no longer distorted.
So on a 16×9 9 tv it looks normal and full frame on a 4×3 tv you need to squash the image so that it becomes letter boxed for it to look normal.
However it does not cut out the top and bottom rather it squashes the image creating the letterbox but all of the picture is retained.
If you then zoomed it in to lose the letterbox you would get a full frame 4×3 image but you lose the left and right sides not the top and bottom.

Hope that makes sense – this might help a bit
https://documentation.apple.com/en/finalcutpro/usermanual/index.html#chapter=F%26section=1%26tasks=true

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

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[Juliana Costa]

Hi Neil, thanks for that.
Funnily enough the original footage doesn’t seem to be anamorphic… I thought it would look “distorted” but instead it look fine when watched on QT preview. Could that be?

[Rafael Amador]

[Juliana Costa] “Funnily enough the original footage doesn’t seem to be anamorphic… I thought it would look “distorted” but instead it look fine when watched on QT preview. Could that be?”
Depending on the file, QT may be displaying properly (16×9) the picture.
Capture the screen and measure the picture width and high.
Width divided by high must be equal to 16/9 = 1.7777..
rafael

[Paddy Uglow]

Note that Quicktime can display different shaped pixels. PAL & NTSC 4×3 and windescreen both have the same NUMBER of pixels, but the playback device stretches each pixel horizontally for the widescreen version.
If you’re using QuickTime 7, you can go into Properties ->Presentation and alter the “conform aperture” box. If it’s an anamorphic movie file, the width will change as you alter the settings. You can also see it in the Movie inspector – sometimes that’ll give you three different pixel sizes – very confusing!
If you’re using QuickTime X, you can show the movie inspector and see how many pixels it really has.
Many pro cameras shoot 16×9 1080 hd as 1440×1080, and you have to set the right pixel width in your editor sequence setup
I hope that’s helpful.

Paddy, CreativeMedia.org.uk

[Juliana Costa]

Hi Paddy, thanks for that. I’m afraid I’m still very much confused :-/

Had a look at the QT Inspector as you’ve suggested and here are the credentials:
H.264, 1920 x 1080, Millions
Linear PCM, 16 bit little-endian signed integer, 2 channels, 48000 Hz
Current size: 1276 x 718 pixels

And now???

[Rafael Amador]

[Juliana Costa] ” 1920 x 1080″
That’s the picture size. Plain standard HDTV, 1920×1080 Squared pixels.
1920/1080 = 16/9 = 1.7777

[Juliana Costa] “Current size: 1276 x 718 pixels”
That’s the size which QTPlayer is displaying the movie, and will change if you make the window bigger of smaller.:
1276/718 = 16/9 = 1.7777

The picture size still being 1920×1080.
rafael

[Neil Patience]

Hi Juliana

As Rafael says that is a standard HD image and would not usually be considered anamorphic. Certainly if nothing appears distorted then I think they are confused about “anamorphic”
It could be that your client shot HD but would like you to letterbox the image which kind of makes sense of the comment about the top and bottom being cut.
If that is the case you do not need to distort the image but simply use a mask top and bottom. There are various film aspect masks you can use depending on the amount of letter boxing required.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

8 Core MacPro, Kona 3, Tangent Wave, Mackie Universal Symphony 6.5 or MC V 7 with Symphony option. FCP7, Color, Media creation and conversion. Adobe Encore DVD creation and authoring.
i7 2.7 Gig MBP (non retina) 16Gigs Ram Blackmagic Monitor Mini Symphony 6.5 or MC v7 with Symphony option FCP7
7TB raid 5 fibre storage.