How to create 14:9 footage from 16:9?

[Duncan Craig]

Hi Dan,
14:9 is a 4:3 format, but with a letterbox.
It exactly half the resize of a 16:9 crop.

In other words, if you take a 16:9 clip and drop it into a 4:3 sequence, you’d have a 16:9 letterboxed image. To size it up to full screen you would size it up to 133% (rounded up). if you size up half as much ie 117% you’ll have a 14:9 letterbox. But 14:9 has to exist within a 4:3 raster, as DVD players only understand 16:9 and 4:3.

So you would size up your image, encode it 4:3, and set DVDSP to 4:3. That’s it.
Of course the best thing would be to encode a disc with both a 14:6 LB and 16:9 FH (Full Height).
Add a menu where the viewer can choose which type to view, personally I would just put a 16:9FH version on, and stuff the people watching no 4:3. You don’t want black bars at the sides of the picture, that would make it even smaller on a 4:3 screen, if the DVD player was set to 16:9 output. If you have 16:9 originated material, make a 16:9 disc don’t compromise for 4:3 screens.

I honestly never deliver anything in 14:9 LB, only 16:9 FH – 14:9 protected. What does that mean…Text safe in 14:9 protected is around 30% horizontal (as opposed to 20% in 4:3), so text which is safe in 16:9 may well not be safe in 14:9. All UK TV programmes are currently produced 16:9 anamorphic FH, 14:9 safe, as many people including me only have 4:3 sets at home. The 14:9 squash and sizeup is generally added during transmission, some Sky satellite channels (Men and Motors for example), transmit from 4:3 (14:9LB) masters, which have been ARCed (Aspect Ratio Converted) from 16:9 masters. Of course the source material has to shot with the 14:9 resize in mind, (known as 14:9 shoot and protect).

A few other points, it worth adding a tiny crop to the top and bottom (0.5 in the motion tab) of the 16:9 image which you drop into a 4:3 sequence, to get rid of the half scan lines at the top and bottom of the image. You may or may get these depend on the format you filmed on.

And I don’t have a 16:9 TV at home because the picture quality of all 16:9 100Hz sets I have ever seen can’t hold a candle to my 5 year old 29” 50Hz 4:3 Sony Trinitron. 😉

Cheers Duncan.

[Dan Brazil]

Duncan,

Many thanks for your detailed response – it has proved to be most helpful and I now feel I have a stronger grip on the issues I (and my client) are facing. Its one thing trying to understand a theory but when you put it into practice it really makes alot of sense…by this I mean that I have just made some 16:9 material 4:3 and I now realise how its done – you HAVE to scale up – and man does it look crappy….can’t believe that’s what you’ve goyt to do if you want to make true 4:3 out of 16:9. And it all has to be re-rendered! (FWIW I also found thsi link which has proved invluable in getting my head fully around it https://www.amcro.co.uk/widescr.htm )

But basically this issue all arises because my client doesn’t want to see any bars at all on the DVD and he is also very concerned that the majority of his viewers will be watching on 4:3 TVs and they will not be having an optimum viewing experience if the footage is 16:9. One can argue the point why the project was shot initially in 16:9 in the first place but this is my situation. Would you argue that my client shouldn’t be so concerned about people watching 16:9 footage on 4:3 TVs (they can after all adjust the aspect ratio on most DVD setup menus I guess) or are his fears genuine ones that run across the board?

Once again, many thanks for your help.

Dan Brazil

G5 DP 2.5; 4Gig Ram; Blackmagic Decklink Extreme; 23″ Cinema HD Display; Sony HR Trinitron PAL monitor with SD card; 500 Gig Lacie Big Disk Triple Interface; FCP HD; DVDSP3; After Effects 6.5; Photoshop CS; Illustrator CS; plus many others

[Dan Brazil]

So I’ve just had a really stressful/confusing converstaion with the technical guy in the edit suite who has been producing the footage for my client. I was discussing the process by which I achieved the 4:3 version (ie dropping the 16:9 footage into a 4:3 sequence and scaling up to 133%) and he is convinced I am barking up the wrong tree and that I can do it without losing any quality. Everything seemed to be making sense but now I’m baffled once more…

Here’s what he says.

The footage was originally put together in After Effects in a 1024×576 widescreen composition with square pixels. He says that if he was making a 4:3 version of the footage he would simply take that composition and drop it into a 4:3 composition and it would fit the HEIGHT perfectly but it would be the width that would be lost on either end. He would then render it out and all would be nice and pristine. And here’s where I am baffled…on the one hand when I implement your method and I drop the 16:9 into FCP I clearly see the WIDTH being the same menaing that I have to scale up. So why do I think the width is the same and he says its the height that’s the same. Is it beacuse I’m working in rectangular pixels and he’s composed in square (but TV’s use recantagular any way). Or is it because when I am using FCP my screen sizes are 720×576 regardless of whether its 16:9 or 4:3…should I change my screen size to a custom size in sqare pixels perhaps. I mean what choice do I have when I capture off a digi-beta and I am told its been recorded in 16:9 anamorphic?

Please put me out of this madness…

Dan

G5 DP 2.5; 4Gig Ram; Blackmagic Decklink Extreme; 23″ Cinema HD Display; Sony HR Trinitron PAL monitor with SD card; 500 Gig Lacie Big Disk Triple Interface; FCP HD; DVDSP3; After Effects 6.5; Photoshop CS; Illustrator CS; plus many others