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How to retain widescreen aspect ratio on export with Quicktime/Compressor?
This is kicking my butt and I’ve spent hours trying to find a solution. I’m working on a 30 second promo spot for a band. The live footage was shot with DV cams using the widescreen setting. The only way I can render a final video and retain the correct aspect ratio (with letterboxing) is using the “Apple Devices” settings in Compressor. Everything else I’ve tried stretches the video. I’m trying to use a higher resolution output than the Apple Devices settings give me for improved quality on Youtube. I’ve even tried to duplicate the Apple presets in Compressor and for the life of me can’t figure out what’s different about those to make them export properly.
Here are the FCP project settings;
Here are the Compressor settings:
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
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6 Replies
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so in FCP select your sequence, export quicktime conversion. then format options, size, custom, make it 720×405. that will display widescreen.
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Thanks Brian, that worked! 16:9 works into 702X405. Makes sense now. I had to check the “preserve aspect ratio” and that did the trick. Choosing to preserve aspect ratio using “crop” there is still a slight letterbox on the top and bottom. Should that be happening?
Also, is this the standard way to work in widescreen or is there something I could be doing differently in FCP to make this whole process a little smoother?
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Good! Going forward you can check the anamorpholic box under sequence settings and also enable the anamorphic column in viewer and tick on anamorphic check mark. One other thing to remember is that displaying anamirphic is usually incumbent on the display. I just delivered a 16:9 file at 720×480 23.98 with no distort. The export looked 4:3 squished but the blue ray authoring house popped it out to 16:9. If you author a 16:9 DVD but play it on a 4:3 screen it will letterboxed. Also like when you layoff an anamorphic sequence to digibeta. Unless you set your display to 16:9 it will look squished…
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Oh and don’t select anytrhing for preserving aspect. Just do the size and don’t check that box…your letterbox will disappear!
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Strangely, if I uncheck the “preserve aspect ratio” it stretches even more. Could the problem be that I set the project up for 720 x 480 then imported anamorphic DV footage?
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hmmm yes that would be my guess…
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