-
Anamorphic vs Letterbox footage
I’m trying to match up footage in FCP 6 from four cameras shooting the same event. Two are Anamorphic and two are Letterbox. All are SD DV or DVCAM. The project and sequence timeline are Anamorphic. Having trouble finding the best way to make the Letterboxed footage fit properly in Anamorphic frame. I don’t want to zoom in and fill the frame because the footage begins to look terrible. If I capture the Letterbooxed footage as Anamorphic, the left & right sides of the frame fit properly, but the image is squished vertically. Is there a way to stretch ONLY the top & bottom of the frame to lose the black bands and correct the squished image so that it fills the frame properly? Are there settings somewhere in FCP that would allow me the proper control? Appreciate any help…
-
7 Replies
-
well you can use the distort tool to stretch the image, but its kind of pointless as the result would be exactly the same as zooming in on the 4:3 letterbox original. When you capture it as anamorphic you are just telling FCP to display the raw image data stretched horizontally, then when you add the vertical stretch to correct the aspect the result is going to be stretched both horizontally and vertically (ie zoomed)
-
AJA cards can capture letterboxed footage as anamorphic but it still has to scale up just like you do in FCP but it does a better job.
The only way to get around scaling is to go to a 4:3 letterbox sequence, which is just a 4:3 timeline and when you drop in the anamorphic footage it will letterbox itself and match the footage shoot as letterbox.
-
Working with a 4×3 timeline, I know everything can be made to look letterboxed. I’m trying to find someway to keep this project anamorphic, but it sounds like that can’t happen unless I zoom (or scale) past the letterbox bars… Is there any way in FCP to stretch only the top & bottom of the frame without zooming in…?
Thanks for the help… -
Nope, Letterbox to anamorphic needs to be scaled around 135% and aspect adjusted to about 33%. No way around this. This is not a limitation with FCP, this is geometry issue, you cannot scale in only one direction without distorting the image.
-
Got it. Thanks for your time & help…
-
Boy do I feel stupid. Try this – Copy and paste your clips from the 4:3 timeline to a new 16:9 sequence and select them and right click on one and choose “Remove Attributes” the Disort and it should be back to normal. Cannot believe I missed this. Learn something new everyday. If this works sorry for sending you the long way.
-
Great tip! Thanks!
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up