Change multiple Item Properties

[David Roth weiss]

Change one photo, then copy that photo, then highlight all the other photos, now paste the attributes and they will copy to all the highlighted photos.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

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[Daniel Wilson]

Hi David,

Thanks for the suggestion. I changed the first jpeg and copied it but when I select the others either in the browser, or in a sequence, the ‘Paste Attributes’ option isn’t available. If I select just one jpeg within the sequence, only the ‘Content’, ‘Basic Motion’ and ‘Clip Settings (Capture)’ options are available. None of these seem to change the Pixel Aspect setting.

I was also wondering, is FCP getting the pixel aspect information from some sort of meta data in the jpegs? If so, is there some way to alter this before importing the jpegs?

Thanks again,

Dan

[Martin Baker]

I’m not sure why you’re having to change the pixel aspect ratio. What size are these photos?

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
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[Daniel Wilson]

In beginning to answer your question I’ve figured out the problem, and you’re right. I didn’t need to change the PA, I had to select the photos and click ‘Remove Attributes’ – Distortion.

I’m just dropping photos submitted by a client into a sequence. Usually FCP shrinks jpegs to fit within the sequence frame but keeps them in proportion, with some black space on the sides. This time it was actually squashing them vertically to fit precisely in the frame, therefore distorting them.

The size of the jpegs was 960×720, and the Pixel Aspect was “HD (960×720)” which I’ve not dealt with before. I’m guessing they were shot with some sort of handycam still function.

By the way I’d still be interested to know if the PA info is in some sort of metadata if anyone knows, just incase I do ever have a reason to try to change it on a large number of files.

Thanks very much for the responses.

Dan

[Walter Biscardi]

[Daniel Wilson] “The size of the jpegs was 960×720, and the Pixel Aspect was “HD (960×720)” which I’ve not dealt with before. I’m guessing they were shot with some sort of handycam still function.”

That’s DVCPro HD frame size.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Daniel Wilson]

Ah, I see. That makes me wonder something else though. These photos are just casual snaps taken by Japanese students while they’re studying in Australia for a year. Does that mean one of them is walking around with a DVCPro HD cam and using it for stills? Or are there consumer handycams which shoot this format?

[Martin Baker]

I’m fairly certain there’s no metadata mystery going on here. When you import a file, FCP compares its pixel dimensions with a list of common video frame sizes. If it finds a match, then it assigns the corresponding Pixel Aspect Ratio. AFAIK there is no way to disable this. So a 960×720 square pixel image is very bad news because FCP (wrongly in this case) thinks this is a DVCPROHD image and makes it 16:9. When you add a file to a sequence then the distort value for that clip gets set based on the PAR. You’re presumably working in a 4:3 sequence, so resetting the Distort value to 0 will get the correct aspect ratio back for the photos.

I don’t think there’s any connection with DVCPROHD on the camera you’re talking about. More likely that if it’s a 720px chip then a 4:3 still image would end up being 960×720.

Anyway all that diversion is irrelevant because you CAN change the PAR of multiple files in the Browser but not from the Properties window. Select the files you want to change, find the PAR column then right-click and choose Square from the menu. The PAR on all the selected photos will change.

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
Unique plug-ins and tools for Apple Pro Apps
———-
Avid2FCP
For Avid editors learning FCP

[Daniel Wilson]

Thanks very much for explaining that method Martin, I’ve actually had this same problem before in trying to change other various parameters of multiple files and that pretty much seems to be the answer to all of them.

And the 4:3 still from a 720px cam makes a lot more sense too.

Cheers,

Dan

[Tom Matthies]

For what it’s worth, Automator can do batch conversions of photos. I just used it to scale about 100 photos that were about 3000×2000 at 300dpi down to a smaller size for use in FCP. It was very easy and it ran in the background while I continued to work. Went pretty fast as well. Check it out.
Tom