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Converting 4:3 DV to 16:9 HDV using pan & scan
Hello,
I have just started to work on a project where I am using both SD 60i 4:3 miniDV footage that I shot with a DVX100, & HDV 1080i60i 16:9 footage shot with a Z1U.
I am editing with FCP6 & understand that the program can handle all types of formats within the same timeline. My goal is to render out to 16:9 HDV. I have done one test render with the clips to Quicktime in HDV 1080i60i with the project settings set to the same using the ‘easy setup’ function. However, this stretches the 4:3 DV image to fit the 16:9 frame.
I would like to be able to crop the 4:3 image and compensate through pan & scan to fit the 16:9 frame rather than stretch it to avoid distortion. & also up convert the DV footage to HDV resolution to output the project as HDV 1080i60i.
Has anyone done anything similar? Or know what A/V settings I should try? Thanks a lot I haven’t used FCP in a couple of years & have never had to deal with multiple formats in a project before. Your help is much appreciated.
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5 Replies
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[Michael Garske] “I would like to be able to crop the 4:3 image and compensate through pan & scan to fit the 16:9 frame rather than stretch it to avoid distortion. & also up convert the DV footage to HDV resolution to output the project as HDV 1080i60i.”
You can’t do this. Your 4:3 footage is 720×480. Your HDV footage is 1440×1080. Your 4:3 has to be blown up to fit the 16:9 space.
You can either stretch it out like FCP has done, or scale it up even further to do the crop you’re talking about. This will seriously distort your image. You can’t simply “letterbox” 4:3 footage and then just drop that into the 16:9 timeline and expect it to work. You’re actually making the 4:3 footage even smaller when you do this so your Scale will probably be around 200% or so to make it fit into the HDV timeline. This is really going to look nasty.
In the future, shoot the standard def footage Anamorphic and it will cut into the HD timeline very easily. It will still be scaled up, but it scales up very nicely.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
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Yeah I know I’ll have to crop the image & this juxtaposed to HDV will look quite bad I realize. However, for this project I’d rather upconvert rather than down convert the HDV despite the loss in quality. I’m going to simply apply some “artsy” effects to help cover up the bad quality & make it look like a stylistic technique. Recently I have been filming in anamorphic but at the time I filmed the DV footage I wasn’t aware that I would be splicing it HDV.
Initially the 4:3 footage stretched the entire image to fill the frame even though I had the image cropped. But when I went back for a second attempt the cropping worked fine & the footage displayed as normal successfully outputting to 1080i.
I must say that while the footage is clearly not anywhere near the same quality as the HDV it is still usable for this purpose (at least by my standards, which may be pretty low haha).
Thank you for your response.
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Here is a plug-in for AfterEffects that takes progressive images and will upconvert them to HD. You have to convert the interlaced DV to progressive first. I’ve read it works very well compared to doing the upconvert in FCP or by AE scaling and only costs $100.
https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/instanthd.html
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Interesting. Thanks for the link looks like a good solution.
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kind of off topic fcp 6.0 question but somewhat the same.
Is there a way to convert a completed project timeline from 4:3 to a 16:9 timeline. We let the automatic settings setup the timeline and didn’t realize it setup a 4:3 timeline for our 16:9 footage with black bars until we exported the footage. Is there a solution besides having to start over, that will not result in lost resolution? I know in my Avid its a simple Properties setting but in FCP I have had no luck?
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