Converting HD 16:9 to SD 4:3 w/ letterbox

[John Fishback]

Tell us more about your footage (codec, frame rate, etc.) and how it’s going to be used.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.2, Motion 4.0.2, Comp 3.5.2, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.2)

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[David Roth weiss]

Create a new sequence with the 4×3 pixel dimensions and copy and past your HD footage into that sequence, and when the popup asks you if you want the sequence to match your video, just say no. That will put your 16×9 video into a 4×3 letterbox.

However, like John, I want to know why you’re doing this, because rarely does anyone need letterboxed video from a 16×9 HD source for anything.

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

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Andy Mees]

>I was surprised not to be able to find an answer to this since I’m sure that the fix is pretty straight forward.

Well its not a “fix” Sam, its just a bunch of settings to:

From the Compressor Settings window, apply the ProRes preset from Apple > Other Workflows > Advanced Format Conversions > Apple Codecs presets: you’ll want either Apple ProRes 422 for Interlaced material or Apple ProRes 422 for Progressive material as appropriate. Next you need to look at that applied setting in the job’s Inspector window, switch to the Geometry tab, and change the “Dimensions (encoded pixels)” >> Frame Size: to 640 x 480 and “Pixel Aspect” to Square, plus the “Output Image Inset (Padding)” >> Padding: to 16×9 1.78:1

Thats it …but as the others have already said, are you really sure about your workflow here … its a very odd one and you might want to consider your options.

Best
Andy

[Sam Morrill]

Hey guys,

Thanks to all for answering my question.

Basically, to make a long story short, I’m going to be editing this 720p footage with some 370 x 240 footage (gross right?) Rather than edit everything in a 720p sequence and have to render all of the SD footage or vice versa, I thought it’d make sense to compress everything to something in between. 640 x 480 seemed to be the right choice since it’s a pretty long video and I’m going to be uploading it to Vimeo and burning it DVD anyway. In other words, HD isn’t really important.

Also, I don’t mind that the compressed HD footage will be letterboxed while the up-res’d SD footage will be true 4:3.

All this said, should I follow Andy’s lead for compressing the HD footage?

Thanks again guys,
Sam

[Andy Mees]

I wouldn’t. If DVD delivery is on the cards then I’d probably be looking to edit everything in a typical Apple ProPres 422 NTSC 48kHz sequence.

The 370 x 240 stuff will scale up to this size easily (200%) and the 720p stuff, instead of letterboxing can be pan and scanned / reframed / center-cut for full frame 4:3 display ie avoid unnecessary scaling wherever possible plus avoid the ugly and unnecessary letterbox.

[Sam Morrill]

Hi Andy,

Thanks again for the response. I’d actually rather not have to pan and scan the 16:9 footage.

I’m admittedly not putting a lot of effort into this video, so I don’t mind the letterboxing. Additionally, I found that when I brought the 720p footage into a 640 x 480 NTSC sequence, I had to do a substantial amount of rendering and I’d really like to get this done as quickly as possible.

Basically, I just want to convert all of my footage to plain old 640 x 480 NTSC by letterboxing the 16:9 footage and up-resing the 370 x 240 footage. What do you think would be the best method to do this?

I understand that if the quality of the video were my priority, your method would be best, but I’m really just going for convenience here.

Thanks again,
Sam

[David Roth weiss]

[Sam Morrill] “Basically, I just want to convert all of my footage to plain old 640 x 480 NTSC by letterboxing the 16:9 footage and up-resing the 370 x 240 footage. What do you think would be the best method to do this? “

Exactly as I told you in my previous post.

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

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Andy Mees]

Hi Sam
If you’re not happy with editing the 16:9 HD files directly in the 4:3 SD timeline as David suggests (and your posts suggest you’re not) then you can go ahead and use the settings I noted above to batch convert your original 720p media to letterboxed 640×480 that you can use natively in your sequence. Do yourself a favor tho … convert one file at first and drop it into a test 640×480 ProRestimeline to test that the conversion settings and workflow work as expected. If its all OK then you can batch convert the rest overnight.
Best
Andy

[Deren Abram]

I have series of short 16×9 projects that needs to be delivered in 4:3 flash (flv) files.

Problem: my 16×9 doesn’t come out letterboxed within the 4:3 frame. It is vertically optically squeezed to fill the space.

Footage and Sequence is 16×9 (1440×1080). I’m exporting through quicktime conversion to Squeeze 6 using a preset that I’ve created, or rather “trying” to create for this project.

The preset uses:
Flash 8
On2 VP6 Pro codec
2-pass VBR
data rate of 896 kbps
Frame size 320×240 (yes, I know it’s small)
Letterbox or Pillar is checked

Any suggestions? I’ve also tried selecting “unconstrained” and “Maintain Aspect Ration” but no good. I also restart FCP after making these changes to ensure FCP finds the changed preset… nothing.

I’d rather not export as .mov and squeeze as there are just too many of them.. besides… it’s supposed to do this. Sorenson is slow to respond. Hoping Cow is faster:)

Thanks!

Mac OSX 10.5.6
Dual 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5
4 GB DDR SDRAM
Mac HD

FCP Version 6.0.3

[Tyler Johnson]

TBN Production part-time worker, Canon 7D and Kiss X4, FCP Studio…