Compositing and Overlay

[Arnie Schlissel]

If you shot standard def, then 16X9 can only be either anamorphic or letterbox. There are no other choices.

If you don’t know which one you shot, you’ll have to refer to your camera’s manual to see which of the 2 it uses.

If you didn’t use either one, then you could not have shot 16X9. The only other option is 4×3.

Arnie
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[Chris Yeo]

No, I definitely shot 16:9 letterbox. I used the HVX-200.
The problem I’m facing is this –

I’m trying to get the bleach bypass look using final cut pro composite mode overlay.

I’ve made 3 sequences. Somehow only 1 sequence allows me to do this (the composite mode overlay). The other 2 do not which I find very strange. All I get when I try to do the overlay is a black screen.

The settings are exactly the same for all 3 sequences, with the exception that for the first sequence, the one that allows me to do the composite mode overlay has the anamorphic mode ticked.

However, when I make a duplicate sequence of the one sequence that works in the hope of getting another working sequence, the composite mode overlay fails. This has me toally confused. I’ve checked out the help guide that came with FCP and searched through google but could find no answers and am pretty clueless about it.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Rafael Amador]

You should start checking if the footage has been recognized as Anamorphic by FC (Browser window). This have to be done BEFORE lying any footage in the sequence.
I’m afraid your footage is set ad 4×3. You have started editing in a 4×3 sequence, and after you have check the Anamorphic window. Big mess like that; Yes your sequence has been CONVERTED to Anamorphic, but the clips inside, still been 4×3. Nobody have changed his “aspect-ratio”.
This can be causing the strange (never heard) issue with the duplicated-but-different sequences.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Chris Yeo] “No, I definitely shot 16:9 letterbox. I used the HVX-200.”

This camera shoots in Anamorphic for 16:9 in my understanding. Any DV 16:9 footage I’ve received from that camera is always anamorphic. So you set up FCP for an Anamorphic timeline and you check off the Anamorphic check box on each clip.

[Chris Yeo] “The settings are exactly the same for all 3 sequences, with the exception that for the first sequence, the one that allows me to do the composite mode overlay has the anamorphic mode ticked.”

Precisely, this is anamorphic footage.

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

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[Chris Yeo]

Thanks for the info. I did some more tests and it seems that the composite mode overlay only works when I click the anamorphic box to enable it on sequence settings.

I tried making new sequences with new settings but they didn’t work. I ended up with the black screen of doom again.

Capture settings were using firewire and DV Pal 48 khz, not DV Pal 48 khz anamorphic. It’s not too bad to start reediting since I only really laid down 2 mins worth of material before doing the test. I’m happy I did that otherwise it would have been much worse.

Is there any way to overcome this problem? I’m still kind of new at this and probably made a mistake somewhere, but I don’t know where unfortunately.

Thanks for all the help so far.

[Chris Yeo]

Thanks for the answer, it helped me a lot. Another quick question.

I tried doing a fast render to a QT movie file to see how it would look and it had all 4 black borders around it in a 4:3 aspect. – Is there any way to remove the black bars on the left and right of the picture and resize it to something like 16:9? Quicktime shows it as 4:3 nonetheless even though I’ve specified a dv pal 48 khz anamorphic setting?

A problem could be when I captured the footage – I set it as DV-pal 48 khz instead of DV-pal 48 khz anamorphic. If so, I assume this means I have to recapture everything again?

Thanks for the help.

[Rafael Amador]

When you are capturing or you are importing Anamorphic footage to FC, you need to tell to FC that those 720×576 must be displayed as 16×9. By deffault FC will treat those pixels are 4×3. Always check the Browser. And don’t worry too much. This kind of mistakes makes you learn faster.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.

[Rafael Amador]

Chris,
First set your Canvas in “Fit to Window” .
Then start by the beginning:
You don’t need to recapture the footage.
Just check “Anamorphic” in the “Anamorphic” column in the Browser.
Go to “Easy setups” and choose DV NTSC Anamorphic 48Khz.
Open a New Sequence.
Drop your clips in the sequence.
You shouldn’t have any problem like that.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.

[Chris Yeo]

I tried the suggestion out and while its helped me get the full screen anamorphic look, composite mode and overlay still gives me a black screen which is still pretty confusing.

However when I change the resolution to 960 X 720, the overlay works. It just doesn’t seem to be working at the standard DV resolution, irrespective of whether it’s been ticked anamorphic or not.

[Randy Lee]

Make sure you’ve got your preset set to PAL, actually, not to NTSC. That shouldn’t be giving you the issues you’re having, but if you shot PAL, that’s definitely something to try to see if it helps get us a step closer.

What composite modes are you using? Have you used them before, and are sure you’re putting the clip that you want to composite over this clip on the track above these clips, then you’re control (or right) clicking and setting the composite modes on those clips (the ones on track 2).