FCP and panasonic SDX 900 16X9 footage

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

You are not doing anything wrong. Your monitor will need to be switched to a 16:9 mode.

Best,

Jan

[Jamie Nabers]

Jan,

I have set my monitor to the 16X9 setting. My viewing is not my problem. When i output it to tape, the images are not letterboxed, they are squeezed. How do i get the images going to tape to be letterboxed?

thanks,

j

[Jamie Nabers]

Jan,

I have set my monitor to the 16X9 setting. My viewing is not my problem. When i output it to tape, the images are not letterboxed, they are squeezed. How do i get the images going to tape to be letterboxed?

thanks,

j

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

You will have to import and set it into a 4:3 window and render it that way. The deck is not caring about how long the line is and so if you are working in an anamorphic signal, then that is what is will record. If you really want it to record a 4:3 with a letterbox, that is what you will have to feed it.

Does that make sense?

Jan

[Jeff Carpenter]

How do i get the images going to tape to be letterboxed?
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You said it in your first post. Put it in a 4×3 timeline and render it. That’s what you have to do to get a letterboxed master.

If you want a letterboxed master, that’s what you should do, but I suggest ALSO making another master where everything’s squeezed. That will be your anamorphic master and it will retain full quality. The letterboxed version will look fine on 4×3 TVs, but if you ever want to copy the master to some other widescreen format or play it on a widescreen TV in the future, you’ll want to use the anamorphic master for that, not the letterboxed one.

So I suggest you make 2 masters, one letterboxed and one anamorphic.

[Jamie Nabers]

yes, thank you.

so FCP wont output letterboxed? only an anamorphic signal to tape? I will have to render the footage in a different sequence with anamporphic turned off, to get it to be letterboxed on output?

[Jamie Nabers]

Thank you guys ! thats what i needed to know.

seems like FCP should support something like that though. where all image quality is retained, just unsqueezed during output.

thanks again,

j

[Jeff Carpenter]

seems like FCP should support something like that though. where all image quality is retained, just unsqueezed during output
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It’s a matter of computer hardware power. You’re asking it to re-arange every single pixel of every single frame of your entire video. Most modern Macs can do a pretty good job of this live, which is pretty amazing if you think about it, but they can’t promise that it will be 100% correct and free of errors or full-quality all the way through. So you have to render it.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I’ve noticed something in your terminology that might explain your initial confusion.

Here’s what’s really going on:

1) Image that’s full-frame with skinny people = Un-Squeezed, Original footage
2) Letterboxed footage = Squeezed down video

You’re calling #1 squeezed when in fact it’s not. That’s what the camera shot and recorded. #2 is the squeezed video.

It’s a small point, but it helps explain why you didn’t originally understand why Final Cut had to render the letterboxed version.