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Scale horizontal only?
I hope this qualifies for the “There are no stupid question, just stupid people who don’t ask” catagory.
Is there a way to scale an image horizontally only? The scale attribute in the motion tab does both H and V. Why?
I have a 4×3 show that is getting a new segment added to the middle , of course the other production company thought it was cool to shoot anamorphic 16×9. So, I figure since the frame size is actually the correct height, can’t I just slap the footage in the timeline and have it crop off the sides? Doesn’t work. I t scales it to fit horizontally so there are black bars on top and bottom. I can scale it to 133%, and it fits vertically, but then it looks bad. So, if I declick the anamorphic check in the bin, edit it into the timeline, it goes full screen (although squished) but, then all I need to do is stretch it horizontally to retune the aspect ratio to look normal. Its ok for the edges to be cut off, i can reframe the shots as needed.
Here’s the thing, After Effects does just that, what I need. Just drop the anamorphic clip onto a 720×480 comp, and it fills the screen but chops off the edges. I can’t find anything in my effects bin that will allow seperate H and V scaling either.
Any ideas? Its probably just a checkbox I’m missing….
Matt
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6 Replies
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[mattjgerard] “I can scale it to 133%, and it fits vertically, but then it looks bad.”
Not if you render it…
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Are you saying hta I can blow something up 33% and as long as its rendered it will look fine, or is FCP decieving me when it states that it is blowing it up to 133%, and it is really 100% vertically?
Hmmm….
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Hi
In the Motion tab instead of Scale, use Distort. Change the 360/-360 coordinates to give you the correct wideness – I work mainly in PAL where its 480/-480.
Since you aren’t altering the vertical line structure in any way by doing it like this the loss in resolution is minimised.
Its easier if you don’t flag the shots as anamorphic, which prevents FCP’s timeline changing the scale and aspect ratio. -
[mattjgerard] “Are you saying hta I can blow something up 33% and as long as its rendered it will look fine, or is FCP decieving me when it states that it is blowing it up to 133%, and it is really 100% vertically?”
FCP is auto letterboxing your widescreen video and you simply want to do a “center cut.” Since the original video is either 480 or 486 pixels tall (I can’t recall if you’re usind DV or 601), blowing-up the widescreen to 133% is, as you say, not really blowing-up at all.
Also FYI, FCP has pretty decent anti-aliasing, so even blowing up 4×3 SD video 33% in FCP isn’t as horrible as you’d imagine. I’ve created several 16×9 projects from 4×3 original that, while slightly softer than the original, still looked pretty darn good.
Hope this helps…
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Thanks to both for your options, I will try them both out, and see if one gives better results than the other. I am using editing into an older dv project, so jsut trying to get the best quality back out.
Thanks!!
Matt
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I have a follow up to this…I’m trying to do something the same as Matt….
You mentioned not to flag your shots as anamorphic. How do you do that through Final Cut? I can’t find anything in the clip properties that show a pixel aspect ratio.
-Jason
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