Mixing 16:9 and 4:3 footage problem

[David Roth weiss]

Peter,

phew!!! That was a rather convoluted post… I’ll help you to sort this out.

First things first… Is your video SD or HD? That makes a big difference because SD 16×9 requires the anamorphic checkbox to be checked in FCP, HD does not.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Bret Williams]

I think you work in a 16:9 sequence, with the footage checked as anamorphic. FCP will pillarbox and make adjustments to the SD 4:3, and will display the SD 16:9 correctly. I haven’t done a widescreen DVD but wouldn’t you mark the footage as 16:9 in DVDSP so that the player knows to either letterbox on a 4:3, or play 16:9 or a widescreen LCD?

I’m sure someone will chime in on that.

[David Roth weiss]

[Bret Williams] “a widescreen DVD but wouldn’t you mark the footage as 16:9 in DVDSP so that the player knows to either letterbox on a 4:3, or play 16:9 or a widescreen LCD?”

Bret,

That part is absolutely right, but its what Peter has on his timeline that needs to be sorted out first.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Zak Mussig]

Hey Peter,

At the end of the day you need the sequence of pictures to come after the anamorphic sequence on the DVD, not necessarily in your FCP timeline.

Are the picture keyframed, or is it basically just a slideshow? If it’s a slideshow, just take the image files into DVDSP and set that up seperately. There’s a cool feature that can turn your slideshow into a video track once you get everything set up. I’m a big fan of this when I just have a few images I need to show in order with no user interaction on a DVD. It’s much easier than making a sequence for them in FCP then exporting to MPEG 2.

If you need the pictures animated, then just set up a second 4×3 sequence in FCP and do whatever you like to the images there, then export 2 MPEG 2s… your sequence and your pictures. These files will be 16×9 and 4×3 respectively.

DVDSP sets display settings at the track level, so set the video track to letterbox 16×9 and have it end jump to the 4×3 picture track. You’ll probably want to use some kind of transition either built into your videos or have DVDSP add a transition between the tracks.

Hope that makes sense and takes care of your problem,
Zak

[Ron James]

I’m guessing (from what I could understand) it’s just a matter of highlighting all those clips, then Remove Attributes > Distort.

[Peter Dewit]

Thanks for all the replies sorry I wasn’t able to post again earlier. Sorry if it was confusing I had to type it pretty quick.

Yes that is pretty much what I decided to do. Export the 4:3 pictures as seperate sequence and set them on a 4:3 track in DVDSP. Then on a LCD in 16:9 mode it should detect it’s 4:3 and simply pillar box correct? The way I exported the 16:9 sequence seemed to work ok. I put it on a 16:9 track in DVDSP and it was in the 16:9 aspect ratio looked great.