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Editing anamorphic & standard together
Hello all,
I have been asked to edit a documentary. I was not involved in pre-production planning and the video has already been shot. My concern is whether the video shot (using a DVX100 and SDX900) can be edited together.
If you would please read the following and let me know if any special steps must be taken to edit this project. I have never dealt with anamorphic video before- so any help you can provide is appreciated. Here’s the description of the video and formats I received in an email last night:
“The footage from the Panasonic DVX100 appears pretty straightforward. This camera uses the DV compression codec and NTSC format so its NTSC frame size is 720×480 CCIR-601 pixels but the video was recorded as anamorphic to preserve the widescreen 16×9 picture aspect ratio. This means the actual displayed size of the picture on your computer screen is 853×480 square pixels without being letterboxed. It appears the video was recorded in normal DV interlaced video mode (as opposed to progressive video mode) with a lower-field-dominant rate of 59.94 fields per second which equates to 29.97 frames per second. All the captured video clips show two channels of mono audio at 48 kHz, 16-bit Big Endian integers whether there was audio on each of those channels or not.
On the other side, the digitized footage from the Panasonic SDX900 raises more questions but, in the end, the results should be pretty much the same as that for the DVX100. I think the shooter would have tried to keep the formats from the two cameras as compatible with each other as possible.
So, neither QuickTime nor Final Cut Pro recognize the captured SDX900 footage as anamorphic but it obviously is. Both applications recognize the footage as using the DVCPRO50 compression codec and NTSC format with an NTSC frame size of 720×480 CCIR-601 pixels; however, the actual display size of the picture on your computer screen is 640×480 square pixels–not the required 853×480 square pixels for a 16:9 picture aspect ratio. One possible scenario is that the shooter used an anamorphic lens on the SDX900 to squeeze the video into a 4:3 frame which means the footage on the tape may not have been tagged as anamorphic. So when the untagged footage was digitized, the resulting digital files were also not tagged as anamorphic. Another scenario is that he shot it using the true 16:9 capabilities of the camera but the footage was not tagged as 16:9 for some reason. So again, when the untagged footage was digitized, the resulting digital files were not tagged as anamorphic. Still another scenario is that the shooter recorded the video as 16:9, the footage was tagged as 16:9 but when it was digitized, the technician did not ensure that the digital files were flagged as anamorphic.
Other than this issue, the SDX900 DVCPRO50 files spec out pretty much like the DVX100 DV files: 720×480 NTSC pixels, interlaced 59.94 fields per second or 29.97 frames per second, and two mono audio channels at 48 kHz. The only differences being the video data rates due to the different compression codecs used and the DVCPRO50 audio is encoded using 24-bit Big Endian integers instead of 16-bit.
I look forward to receiving any help you can provide.
Jim
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2 Replies
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Well, you either have to work in a 16:9 sequence and blow up the 4:3 footage to full screen 16:9 by 133%, and chop off the top and bottom…or work in a 4:3 sequence and scale the 16:9 to fit that, and chop off the sides. Either way, some footage is losing a portion of the picture, and getting scaled.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Shane,
Thanks for the response. I had a feeling I was going to run into losing some of the image along the way. I appreciate you confirming that for me.
I wish I had been involved in the planning for this film as I certainly would have pushed for consistency throughout field production to avoid just such a situation.
Thanks again,
JimJim Carswell
Spyhop Productions, Inc.
Savannah, GA
http://www.spyhopproductions.com
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