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DVCPRO HD export aspect ratio crazyness
So, when I export a DVCPRO HD 720 30p timeline in Compressor or QT Compression to 320×240 (or any 4:3 aspect ratio), it elongates the picture, no matter what settings I change. I’ve tried to figure it out for a long time, and I’ve found pages that say it’s a bug, and that DVCPRO HD is really not 1280 x 720 and has weird (1.333) pixels … long story short, can I get correct aspect ratio via letterbox in a 4:3 frame size?
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13 Replies
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No bug at all.
If You have a 16×9 picture and you want to show it in a 4×3 screen, you have two solutions:
– Crop the two sides of the 16×9. In this case the movie will fill the screen but you will lose part of the picture.
– Letter-boxing. You will see the whole of your picture with a black band on top and down.Open in FC a 8b-Unc 4×3 sequence (Progressive) and drop your DVCProHD movie on it. Resize to picture or let it letter-boxed. Export with QT conversion 320×240.
rafael -
No way to get the desired results if the timeline is already DVCPRO HD. Because rendering all the time kind of sucks. There has to be a group of settings or compression that can add two simple bars to a 16:9 picture. But thanks for the advice, that’ll at least work for some projects! 😀
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Two options. Make a 16×9 aspect ratio (such as 640×360). No letterbox. It’s much cleaner.
or
Mess with the padding in the geometry tab. For example if you want a 640×480 with letterbox you have to do a bit of math first. 640×360 is a 16×9 image. So take 480-360 (which equals 120) then divide that by 2. 120/2=60. So add a pad of 60 pixels on the top and 60 on the bottom. You can preview this in the COmpressor window to make sure you got it right.
Jeremy
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Yeah, that’s how we’ve been doing it. It just seems, from the different checkboxes and DVCPRO HD presets and all, that theres’s a more elegant, maybe less lossy way to do it. But yeah, buffers are how we’ve been doing it. What causes this? Because other formats letterbox fine with the right settings … Thanks, by the way, you guys all rock. Hard.
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Well, DVCPRo HD is Natively 16×9 squeezed to 4×3. In roder to properly show the correct 16×9 aspect ratio, you are going to have to stretch it out somewhere. Compressor does a fine job of this.
Jeremy
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Well, if that’s the best way, it’s the best way! Thanks a bunch. Now, I am a little confused. You said it’s 16:9 squeezed into 4:3. My (probably way off) understanding was that it’s 4:3 (960×720) stretched to 16:9 (1280×720) by using rectangular pixels (1.333). These are probably dumb questions, but I’m self-taught so my knowledge is hardly textbook. Thanks again.
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You’re right. It’s a different aspect ratio. When it gets played back those rect pixels @ 1.333 get sqauhsed to square (1.778, which is 16×9)
Jeremy
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Squashed or stretched?
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You have to squish a rectangle into a square.
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Then (bear with me here) how does the frame size (dimension) get bigger? If it’s 960×720 native, to become 1280×720, doesn’t something have to get stretched?
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