exporting 16×9 problem

[Gary Milligan]

[noah wight] “What is the setting I’m missing?”

What are the settings you’re using?

Gary

This is me – this is what I do – https://web.mac.com/garymmw

[Noah Wight]

Not in front of the computer but from memory.

Quicktime h264, high quality, 44100, lower field, exporting audio and video
None of this addresses the 16×9 vs 4×3 though. Preferences are set at 525 16×9 video in. I’m probably missing something but does that shine any light?

[Michael Slowe]

Not in front of my edit computer either but if, in the Export box you click on Options, you should get a list somewhere of all the possible export options, codecs and aspects. May I ask why H264 rather than ProRes HQ? I thought that ProRes may be better quality but may be wrong.

Michael Slowe

[Olof Ekbergh]

I usually do an export by reference (or self contained) and then use Sorenson or Compressor to do a conversion, to whatever pixel size I need.

I take it this is for computer viewing.

NTSC D1 16:9 is 720×486, the picture is just stretched to make the aspect ratio, this is what is used for tape, or DVD. 720×480 is used for a DVD 16:9. HD is square pixels so there the ratio is 16:9 (1920×1080), but that is not the case with SD.

Olof Ekbergh

[Floh Peters]

[noah wight] “I’m trying to export a program range from an ntsc 601 16×9 line and it’s coming out 720×486? Driving me nuts. What is the setting I’m missing? suite 2. thanks. N”

NTSC 601 16×9 is 720×486. Where do you want to go from there? E.g. for DVD the resolution is right. For Web viewing you should convert to H264 or another codec anyway, then you can do a proper scaling as well to compensate for the anamorphic pixel aspect.

[Noah Wight]

M- The h264 is just by habit. That’s the format my web player likes and I was just going to load a proof for the client.
O- I can run it through Sorenson but seems it should be easier than that. 16×9 program should export a 16×9 clip. I took a clip from a 4×3 program line and it exported out as the same size. So one looks a little stretched and the other looks squeezed. The final product will be projected on a screen at a fundraiser and I’ll deliver it as a .mov and dvd. They have not decided how they are playing it yet.

The problem here is that i just switched to the Blackmagic Designs studio 2 card from Kona because with the tv station I get all kinds of footage both analog and digital. I’ve been trouble shooting the analog inputs and was changing a bunch of settings around so i figured i must have switched something. I’ve never had an issue with exporting HD clips. I’m just not understanding why the 4×3 and 16×9 programs would both export to a 720×486 clip.

[Noah Wight]

Floh- The problem is that the exported file looks very bad and the dvd as well. why would the file exported from a 4×3 program be the same size as the file exported from the 16×9? 720×486.

[Floh Peters]

This is the nature of SD broadcast video. Everything is 720*486, only stretched differently. How do you go to DVD? Which software do you use?

If you want to view your clip correctly in QT player (7), open the clip properties (command J), select the video track and scale it to 864*486 PX.

[Noah Wight]

so using idvd or toast, it still burns the clip in as 720×486 and it looks squeezed on playback and super interlaced to the extent that transitions create weird horizontal lines. any idea why?

[Floh Peters]

[noah wight] “so using idvd or toast, it still burns the clip in as 720×486 and it looks squeezed on playback and super interlaced to the extent that transitions create weird horizontal lines. any idea why?”

Yes, of course. You NTSC guys have to make everything more difficult than it has to be 😉
While SD broadcast formats (the 601 formats) are 720*486 both in 16:9 as well as 4:3, the DV-based formats (including MPEG2 for DVD) are 720*480, so they have 6 lines less than the 601 signal. And if you convert for DVD, the cheap solutions like Toast and iDVD simply scale down the 486 lines to 480 lines without knowing something about fields and stuff, so the results usually look horrible.

A good way to go (if you want to continue to use iDVD or Toast) is to export from Media 100 Suite as a DV-Stream (which will automatically convert to 480 lines on export). Make sure you use the “lower field first” setting, and the “Computer 0-255” color range on export. Plus, you also can set the image to display as 16:9 automatically in the export settings. The resulting files should work with Toast and iDVD nicely.