center cutting SD anamorphic footage

[Shane Ross]

There is a video tutorial on how to do this called Multi Aspect Ratios found here:

http://www.proapptips.com/captmench

Shane

Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net

[Jeremy Doyle]

I watched the video and it told me to scale the video to 133. I revert to my orginal question – Is there a way of doing a center cut of anamorphic footage without scaling? I’m assuming the scaling affects video quality.

When you drop 4×3 into the 16×9 it automatically pillars it and when you put 16×9 into the 4×3 it automatically letterboxes it. If I take my anamorphic footage out of my deck I can crop which leaves me with full 4×3, but than I don’t have pan and scan. Is there a way to make my anamorphic footage pan and scan instead of letterbox without scaling?

[Aaron Neitz]

The only way is to 133% it. But it’s not really “scaling” it up. You’ll notice that interlace stays on fields and if you were to crop in AE and do a comparison, it should be full res in FCP even with 133. Then you can pan/scan with the X motion tab. At least, that’s what we’ve done on the last couple anamorphic projects. Looked pretty good on a BVM.

[Ben Holmes]

You could achieve the same thing as follows:

Drop the footage onto the timeline.
Leave the scale setting to 100.
Open the ‘distort’ section on the motion Tab.
Set all the figures in the Upper/Lower/Left right boxes as follows:
-480, -288
480, -288
480,288
-480,288

Finally, set aspect ratio setting below to 0. (It’s normally -33 for anamorphic footage).

This MAY cause the footage to be rendered differently/better, as in effect you are stretching rather than zooming, but I doubt it’ll look any different – FCP is probably misleading you with the 133 scale figure in reality, as it re-frames the anamorphic footage. Let us know!

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.

FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk

[Ben Holmes]

You know, just tried a render based on my bizarre advice, and it looks a bit worse than the 133 scaled footage – plus it actually NEEDS rendering on my PB.

That may be the most pointless work-around ever posted!

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.

FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk

[Matt Sandström]

[Ben Holmes] “That may be the most pointless work-around ever posted!”

haha, yeah but if somebody needs a workaround that badly why not let them. 🙂

/matt

https://www.mattias.nu/