FCP importing anamorphic motion files as 4:3

[Tom Wolsky]

Let me see if I can get this straight, you’ve create an anamorphic project in Motion. You’ve brought anamorphic material into the project and have set the anamorphic flag for the material in Motion. You have then saved the Motion project as a template.

In FCP you have set an anamorphic preset, opened the timeline, and added the Motion template to the timeline. The anamorphic material in Motion is now coming into FCP as regular 4:3 non-anamorphic material.

Is that correct?

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Ariane Fisher]

Mostly correct. I apologize for being clear as mud in my initial post. The footage used in the background of the motion project is not anamorphic. It is an SD Digital Juice jumpback that I scaled up to fill the frame. There is no anamorphic footage used anywhere. I used that preset because I thought that was the only way to get the 16:9 aspect ratio that I was looking for with my SD footage.

[Tom Wolsky]

I’m confused again. So the Motion template is anamorphic, right? What happens with the Motion template in the FCP sequence?

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Bret Williams]

Yes, there is. Right there in the Anamorphic column like Tom said. Right click, and choose yes.

[Bret Williams]

You do understand that there is no difference between anamorphic video and SD 4:3 video, correct? They are exactly the same. What is different is how the hardware (TV) or software (FCP) deals with them. Tell a TV you’re sending it anamorphic (via a menu option on the TV) and the TV squishes the vertical, making it letterboxed. Tell FCP that a sequence is anamorphic and it does nothing to the sequence, but distorts whatever you put IN the sequence. It also displays the sequence as squished in the viewer. But that’s it. If the sequence is anamorphic, then you drag a anamorphic clip or template into it (either marked as anamorphic in bin) then it fills the frame. If you don’t mark it as anamorphic, then it squishes it horizontally, so that when played back as letterboxed, it will then look correct (and pillarboxed with the letterbox).

That’s it. No magic settings. Just mark your media as anamorphic in the bin if it is. And make sure your sequence is anamorphic. Any 4:3 material will be handled properly by FCP. Any anamorphic will be handled properly. If you have anamorphic and drop it in a 4:3 seq, then the sequence will scale it down to a letterbox.

[Ariane Fisher]

Although I’m not an idiot, I don’t mind being treated as one if I can learn something. 🙂

Yes, I know they are both 720×480, the only difference being one has a pixel aspect ratio of .9 and one has a ratio of 1.2. I also know that I can check the anamorphic box in the browser for project files. This is not an option for templates, however. Try going to the effects tab and looking at the motion templates, there is no anamorphic column. It’s also not good for the workflow if I have 20 to 30 templates inserted in a timeline, and then have to highlight them all, hit cmd-9, and check anamorphic.

It’s entirely possible that I’m missing something obvious. How about you try creating a simple 16:9 project in motion, just throw a simple background or photo on the canvas, make it a template, and try bringing it into FCP as a template. Even though both the template and FCP sequence are anamorphic, you have to manually go into the format tab of the motion template and check the box, bad for workflow.

But again, I could be doing this whole thing wrong. Perhaps none of it should be 720×480 anamorphic. I was simply looking to achieve a consistent look between my 16:9 footage and 4:3, so that they would both show up ok on a 16:9 tv. Yes, I know that’s a whole can of worms, and yes, I do know how to handle both sizes of footage. But, I need to have one, and only one, set of motion templates with both sets of footage. So, I thought I would create the templates (there are 400 of them) 16:9, make all the FCP sequences 16:9, bring the compressed movies into DVDSP 16:9 with 16:9 menus, and I’d have a consistent look.

All I’m really looking to do, is have FCP bring an anamorphic template in, as anamorphic, without having to check or uncheck anything.

[Tom Wolsky]

You make your Motion template in DV anamorphic. Your FCP reset is set to DV anamorphic. You select your anamorphic template and put it in your anamorphic sequence. Press Cmd-Opt-V and remove the distort attribute. Motion templates don’t support anamorphic projects properly.

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Ariane Fisher]

Awesome. So I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was wondering about that when I saved the templates because the only options were NTSC, PAL and HD. You mentioned “your FCP reset”, what is that?

At the risk of sounding geeky, I hacked into the XML code of the motion template to check the pixel aspect ratio. It is 1.2 in the code, so it should be seen as anamorphic. There is no mention of the word anamorphic anywhere in the code, hence, no checkbox in the FCP browser.

I guess my question now would be why FCP is automatically applying a 33% distort to the file only when inserted into an anamorphic sequence. When it’s inserted in a non-anamorphic 4:3 sequence, it does not apply the distort (of course then it does look distorted).

By the way, I did a test. I created a new anamorphic sequence and inserted the template. I then highlighted it, hit cmd-opt-v, unchecked distort, but it didn’t actually change the distort setting. I double checked in the viewer. It works if you click the red x in the viewer. Must be some bug.

[Tom Wolsky]

“You mentioned “your FCP reset”, what is that?”

That should be preset, not reset.

The distort is how it corrects for FCP sees as an incorrect aspect ratio, what it sees as a 4:3 element. Remove the distort corrects that. The opposite is the case insert it into a 4:3 sequence. It thinks it’s correct, but it isn’t.

“unchecked distort”

I didn’t tell you to uncheck distort. If you uncheck it the attributes aren’t being removed. That’s the point of having it checked. That’s the attribute you want to remove. Perhaps I should have written Press Cmd-Opt-V to remove the attributes.

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Ariane Fisher]

Ok, I got you now. It works. So, am I correct in saying the big question is why FCP sees the motion template as non-anamorphic 4:3, when the XML code is telling it that it’s 1.2 pixel aspect ratio?

I checked the code, on a 16:9 anamorphic sequence with the anamorphic template dropped in. FCP marks the anamorphic flag of the template false, even though it should be true. Now, once it reads this as false, it is automatically applying the distort because it thinks it should apply this to a 4:3. I’m guessing this is a communication issue between motion and FCP. The lack of an anamorphic tag in the motion code causes it to read as false.

This is probably far more in depth than almost any other user will ever need, but for my purposes, I might play around with the XML code of the templates and see if I can alter it so that it will automatically read correctly by FCP.