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Capture problem 16:9
I am capturing dv footage shot normally (720×480), but it is capturing at 16:9. It appears normal in the camera viewfinder, normal on an external monitor and normal in the capture window. But the resulting captured file – is showing up 16:9. I’m capturing from an external dv deck. Baffled and on a deadline – any help would be much appreciated 🙂
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3 Replies
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That happened to me once. After a 16:9 project I changed the capture prefs back to DV NTSC and it still captured in 16:9. Trashing FCP the preference files cured the problem. I think sometimes FCP has a one track mind (pun intentional) and needs occasional shock therapy.
– Don
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Hi Don,
Thanks for replying – I think the problem might be more serious as it turns out that I accidently shot the footage with the aspect ratio set to “SQU” or squeeze to 16:9. This setting doesn’t make the black bars appear in the viewfinder as the usual indicator of 16:9. I think my external monitor is “unsqueezing” it – therefore it looks fine there. I’ve called the shop that rented me the camera (and preset it to squeeze without telling me.) Any thoughts on how to “unsqueeze” the footage? so I can get it into FCP at 4:3? thanks
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Oh Dear. Well, I suspect that you’ll have to capture it in its native 16:9 aspect ratio using the DV NTSC Anamorphic preset, otherwise it’ll come in squeezed and not looking right. Drag the clips into a DV NTSC Anamorphic sequence, then crop both sides to 720×480. Create a new standard NTSC 48Khz sequence and copy/paste the footage from the Anamorphic sequence into the 4:3 sequence. The result will not fill the 4:3 frame, so now you’ll have to expand/zoom the footage to fill that frame.
You could do the same to the original source clips in the viewer but if it was me I’d leave the source clips alone just in case I didn’t get it right the first time. There’s going to be a lot of rendering involved here. You’re also taking a resolution hit twice because of the electronic 16:9 interpolation from the camera, plus you’ll lose more res when you expand the cropped footage to fill the 4:3 frame.
Not the best way to correct the aspect ration problem but it might not turn out too bad. All you can do is try. Let’s hope your subject matter was always centred in your frame during the shoot. Look at the result on an NTSC monitor and see if it’s going to look okay.
This may or may not be the best/easiest way to correct things for you, but I’d give it a go. If anyone else has a better idea let them speak now 🙂
Hope this helps.
– Don
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