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Importing 16mm HD 1080p into AVID – correct aspect ratio
My son made a short film in an intro production class that was done as an assignment to hand-edit the 16mm film. I got the film transferred to a digital file so that he could edit it with his Avid software and make a nice sample of his work. The problem comes in where maybe I didn’t know enough to request the best format to import into Avid?
The file we received is a Quicktime uncompressed HD 1920×1080 24fps (1.06Gbt data rate). I know I was in over my head by not understanding 16mm film – my son and I have learned a lot in a few days about specs,codecs, etc. The problem is the digital file is 1920×1080, but the image seems to be actually in a 4:3 aspect ratio with black pillar bars on the sides. We are having trouble getting a good size image to edit in his project. He can import the file as SD and then he gets a smaller image that is less than 4:3 – or he can import as HD and gets a very tall image that will clip a good bit of the top of the film.
Is there a way to import this and get a slightly larger file to edit – maybe in SD format? Do you guys have any suggestions for him to optimize / maximize what he can do with this file?
Thanks for your help. I will try and attach three images showing the actual quicktime plot, the SD avid project and the HD Avid project.
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3 Replies
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16mm is natively a 4:3 aspect ratio format unless you protected and composed for 16:9 when shooting then chose to transfer that way. You can do a pan and scan 16:9 extraction from the 4:3 and that will crop off top and/or bottom or whatever between the two.
Michael
Michael Phillips
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Michael,
Sorry for such newbie questions. Can you tell me a little more detailed how to do the “pan and scan” to crop off? If the image is 16:9, but has pillars because the 16mm image is 4:3 inside, will I be able to import the file and just crop out the pillars?
Thanks for your help.
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Hi Stan,
when you use the Pan&Scan effect on your 4:3 footage you basically crop the image on the top and bottom as Michael stated. To get a 4:3 picture in a 16:9 format you have to change the “proportions” of your image. You need to create an image that is wider than your original. To achieve this you use the Pan&scan effect. When you drop it on your footage you set the source button to 4:3 and the target button to 16:9. Then you can decide how you want to crop the image. That means if you want to crop more of the top part or the bottom part. You do this with the v position slider. In the end you have “cut out” a portion of your original 4:3 picture in the 16:9 aspect dimensions.
Hope I could be of some help.Yours sincerely Hans
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