shot 2.1 in 4K. Trying to go for 2.35:1 for picture lock

[Aaron Neitz]

So what are you editing in? 1080?

Based on your info it sounds like you shot with a regular lens so the only way to get 2.35 is to letterbox it. You can have compressor crop off the letterbox for delivery, but you’ll need to do some math to figure out the dimensions of the resulting file.

for instance a 1920×1080 movie with 2.35 letterbox would have 1920×817 pixel of actual image.

[Michael Gissing]

Before going to Compressor though, you will want to put the letterbox on just to see if you need to adjust framing.

Somewhere there must be a plugin that creates an accurate 2:35 letterbox

[Nicole Elmer]

Hi,

We’re editing the “M” QT proxy file, which are 1024×512.

We shot in 4K 2:1 4096×2048.

Hope this is the info you asked for. I’m a Red One “newbie.”

Thanks again for your help.

[Arnie Schlissel]

[Michael Gissing] “Somewhere there must be a plugin that creates an accurate 2:35 letterbox”

I would just make a matte in Photoshop.

Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/

[Aaron Neitz]

SOOOO…. for outputting a rough cut with a 2.35 mask you’d end up with 1024×435 pixels of image data. So from your 1024×512 file crop off 38.5 pixels from the top and bottom (or 39 from one and 38 from the other. it’ll be cleaner).

I can’t vouch for FCP’s 2.35 widescreen filter with M Proxies…. but it should be pretty close to those dimensions.

[Nicole Elmer]

Hi Aaron and everyone who has replied,

Thanks for all this info. I’ll give these things a try this evening and see what happens.

Thanks so much!

[Russell Lasson]

I would suggest using a program like REDRushes or Clipfinder to render out ProRes Proxy versions to edit with. In these programs, you can adjust the aspect ratio and also add a crop to the image to get to your 2.40 frame size. So you’ll still render out at 16:9, but the footage will be letterboxed within that frame to 2.40.

Plus, editing with the QT proxy files stinks when compared to editing with ProRes Proxy files (at either 1080 or 720P).

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net

[Nicole Elmer]

Hi Russell,

If we’re a few weeks away from pic lock, is there a way to replace the “M” QT proxy files we’ve already edited with with these ClipFinder generated ProRes proxy files?

Grr…lots to learn.

🙁

[Nicole Elmer]

Anyhow, I thought I’d post results here in case someone else finds themselves in a similar situation.

This is what I did to get WHAT I THINK is going to work for getting 2:1 4k Red footage to 2.35:1. Or at least the “M” proxy files as close to the original intention of “Panavision 2.40” as possible.

After fooling around in FCP with cropping pixels which wasn’t actually something I could find (spent time in the Motion tab), I decided to mess around with Compressor.

I removed the 2.35:1 matte on the clips in FCP.

I exported using Compressor, the “Best Quality MPEG 2” 90 min.

In Compressor, there is an “inspector” tab. I went to the “Geometry” tab and located some presets here. There are two areas where one can pull down various options for output padding, etc. (I’m not in front of my editing station, so this is from memory.) I chose “panavision 2.35:1” for both areas where these pull-down menus exist.

I exported a brief clip and burned it to a DVD.

The weird slight vertical stretching that happens with 2:1 Red footage sent directly to Compressor with no other attributes assigned to it was gone. Yay!

My TV is old and doesn’t display DVDs properly, so I popped in the DVD at work to play it here on this Apple monitor. Doing a very “ghetto” style method here at work, I measured with the width and height dimensions, using the 16th of an inch as the unit of measure.

W: 69 units
H: 30 units

The math gave: 2.3

So…pretty close but not totally accurate. But I’ll say, much better than it was before.