Best way to do letterbox from 16:9?

[Jeremy Garchow]

After Effects will give you a nice, clean scale. It’s what I usually do if I need to do what you are doing, but it’ll mess up your gamma settings between the round trip between FCP to AE and back due the translation of YUV to RGB back to YUV.

I have also liked the results in FCP5 making sure that your sequence render settings are set to best.

What’s going on with your titles?

[Harley Michailuck]

[JeremyG] “I have also liked the results in FCP5 making sure that your sequence render settings are set to best.”

Thanks for the reply Jeremy.

I tried the best setting and the top and bottom edges of the image become soft as well as the top and bottom edges of the titles and any other graphics.

May try the After Effects route… I’m using Kona 2 and there is new codec from AJA that apparently cleans up the gamma shift problem… I believe it’s call AJA 2Yuv Codec. Will try some tests this morning.

What scale would you use in After Effects?

Thanks!

Best,
Harley

Harley Michailuck
Brass Orchid Post fx
Saskatoon, SK Canada

https://www.brassorchid.com

[Harley Michailuck]

[Harley Michailuck] “I believe it’s call AJA 2Yuv Codec”

It’s actually the AJA Kona v210 Codec.

Best,
Harley

Harley Michailuck
Brass Orchid Post fx
Saskatoon, SK Canada

https://www.brassorchid.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

the material I worked with was shot on an SDX 900 and has a native frame size of 720×480, so I scaled down the y value to 75% (leaving the x value at 100%).

Also, with that codec, I think all of your material has to be captured in FCP in that codec before taking it out to AE. I have yet to try this workflow, but I’m curious about it and will use it in another week when a similar project comes through the door just like we are talking about now. Let me know how it works out for you.

I also did my titles after the AE render as the aspect ratio is now changed. SInce you have created them in an anamorphic setting, they might look funky squeezing them down to a non anamorphic setting, but that probably depends on how you set up your titles.

ANother advantage is that your whole program will be coming out of After Effects so your whole program will be effected with the gamma shift, which is good because your whole program will now be in the same color space so the 2vuy codec might not be necessary, but I’d like to know if this works anyway.

Hope all of this helps

Jeremy

[Harley Michailuck]

[JeremyG] “the material I worked with was shot on an SDX 900 and has a native frame size of 720×480, so I scaled down the y value to 75% (leaving the x value at 100%).

My source is 720 x 486 IMX Anamorphic. Did the same 75% scale and everything looks great.

[JeremyG] “Also, with that codec, I think all of your material has to be captured in FCP in that codec before taking it out to AE. I have yet to try this workflow, but I’m curious about it and will use it in another week when a similar project comes through the door just like we are talking about now. Let me know how it works out for you.”

I captured the material via Uncompressed 10 bit, made a reference file of the final color corrected video elements and brought that into After Effects. Rendered the letterbox movie out using the AJA v210 codec. As a small test, I took off the scaling and rendered out a 2 second section using the AJA v210 codec and cut that piece into the original timeline. I cannot see a color or gamma shift in that complex scene. You may want to try that test yourself. I don’t think you can capture using the AJA v210 codec… unless it’s called something else in the capture settings.

Hope this helps… let me know how you make out… email me directly if you wish at harley@brassorchid.com.

Best,
Harley

Harley Michailuck
Brass Orchid Post fx
Saskatoon, SK Canada

https://www.brassorchid.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

Cool, thanks for the updates, Harley. You can most definitely capture in AJAs v210 (or 10 bit RGB for that matter). But you have to make your own easy setup to do so. When making the capture preset simply choose the 10-2vuy or 10-rgb codecs. Make sure to set up your timeline to that codec as well.

Were you able to cut the 2vuy stuff in with the other Apple 10 bit sequence without rendering?

[Harley Michailuck]

[JeremyG] “Cool, thanks for the updates, Harley. You can most definitely capture in AJAs v210 (or 10 bit RGB for that matter). But you have to make your own easy setup to do so. When making the capture preset simply choose the 10-2vuy or 10-rgb codecs. Make sure to set up your timeline to that codec as well.

So are you saying the v210 and 2vuy are the same codec? Please clarify.

No, I didn’t have to render when bringing the v210 clip into the uncompressed 10 bit timeline… it cut right in.

Best,
Harley

Harley Michailuck
Brass Orchid Post fx
Saskatoon, SK Canada

https://www.brassorchid.com