Importing 16:9 video

[Carsten Orlt]

Curious thing is that FCPx doesn’t understand anamorphic video. Its square pixels only.

So do not bother using FCPx but go straight to compressor. You have to enable to frame control and choose better fps change. search to cow for the right setting as it has been discussed a lot in the FCP7 forum.

Cheers
Carsten

[Denise Powers]

Hi Carsten,

Thanks very much for your response. Sorry for the follow-up questions, but since I’m new to this, I just need to clarify a couple of things…

Since I only have FCP X (and not 7), I eventually have to work with it, so by “skipping it” do you mean that I’m supposed to use Compressor to capture the footage from the DVCAM cassettes into the computer? I’m using Compressor 4 & I can’t find that capability–the only thing I seem to be able to do is work with already existing digital video files (that have to get onto the computer somehow).

Thanks for your help!

Denise

[Rafael Amador]

[Denise Powers] “I’ve just captured the footage from DVCAM cassettes filmed at a 16:9 aspect ratio. I need to convert it from NTSC to PAL (which I intend to do in Compressor), but I’m hesitating before I move ahead with this step because the picture quality looks terrible–as if it’s displaying the 16:9 in 4:3–and there is a fuzzy dot in the middle of the images. The problem is that I can’t find the same options for setting the aspect ratio upon import as apparently existed in previous versions of FCP. “
The only problem I see that you can’t change the FCPX Viewer (Canvas?) aspect ratio (at least I don’t know how to do it).
You will need to edit the 16×9 stuff displayed as 4×3.
That may be uncomfortable, but doesn’t hurt.
Set (Project and clips) “Spatial Conform; NONE”.

As I said, Anamorphic or 4×3 is about displaying.
QT has been for years unable to display 16×9 DV properly and nobody has died.

Make sure that when you import the stuff to Compressor, in “Geometry > Pixels aspect” you set 16×9.

[Carsten Orlt] “Curious thing is that FCPx doesn’t understand anamorphic video. Its square pixels only.”
Not really.
FCPX recognize perfectly my DV Anamorphic stuff.
FCPX is “pixel agnostic”. Works with “plain pixels” without regard the aspect-ratio.
The real problem is when mixing SD 4×3 and 16×9. and you want to put out 16×9.
Then you will need to manually distort the 4×3 stuff.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

QTEdit can help restore the anamorphic flag if it’s missing:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/344/4262

Jeremy

[T. Payton]

The problem with FCP X is that it doesn’t let you change the interpretation of pixel aspect ratio for clips. (Crazy! I know. A huge oversight in my opinion. If I could get access to the code, I would teach myself XCode and add that feature in a few hours. In fact here is where it should be:)

I was about to loose a bunch of sleep on this issue but then just scaled the unrecognized anamorphic footage 133% on the X axis so it would fit my 16×9 anamorphic SD project in FCP X. Works perfectly. And you don’t need to render this stretched stuff before you export, FCP X will take care of it on export and it won’t add any time to your export. See this post for more info:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/344/4262

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Rafael Amador]

[Jeremy Garchow] “QTEdit can help restore the anamorphic flag if it’s missing:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/344/4262“
I don’t see any problem with the “Anamorphic flag”.
FCPX recognize perfectly my 4×3 and Anamorphic DV stuff (as was captured with FCP 5 or 6).
The problem is that you can not make an SD Anamorphic project.
No problem to edit 16×9 stuff in a 4×3 window; will look distorted everything but you can flag the stuff as anamorphic later.
The problem is when you want to mix 4×3 and 16×9 stuff in the same project.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

Since you seem to have a vendetta out for me Rafa, the OP says she only has FCPX.

QT Edit will fix the issues and mark the footage as anamorphic, it is obvious that the flag is missing.

Jeremy