Some Questions:

[Jeff Brown]

You mention you shoot 16:9. What format? (DV, HDV, HD, etc) I suspect it is your pixel dimensions: most formats other than true HD use rectangular pixels. For example, shoot 16:9 with a Panasonic SX900, SD/DV50, and you should use 720×480 with a 1.2 pixel aspect ratio.

-jeff

[Kevin Mcquade]

I am shooting in BETACAM SP.

[Carey Dissmore]

Kevin, this is in no means personally directed at you, but more of a general statement.

It never ceases to amaze me how many shooters, not to mention producers in the professional video industry fail to grasp the concept of what anamorphic is all about.

Yes, it’s true. There are the same number of pixels in a 4:3 image as in a 16:9 image.
YES. REALLY.

The other thing is…in standard def video production formats…pixels are never perfect squares.

Standard def D1 frame size is always 720×486.
Standard def DV frame size is always 720×480.

YES. For BOTH 4:3 and 16:9 aspect.

What changes is the pixel aspect ratio
4:3 uses 0.9. That means the pixel shape is taller than it is wide.
16:9 uses 1.2. That means the pixel shape is wider than it is tall.

But the number of pixels DOES NOT CHANGE.That’s why it’s called Anamorphic.

You mentioned you were working in Betacam. That is absolutely irrelevant because you could be digitizing to either a D1 or DV frame size (see above)depending on your capture settings.

You should be setting up your AE comps as either D1 or DV frame size and setting the pixel aspect ratio accordingly. When you work in AE your computer monitor WILL NOT look right unless you turn on pixel aspect correction which makes shapes look correct but makes the image appear as if it’s really chunky. I choose to view 1:1 in AE on the computer monitor and just look at my outboard NTSC monitor for preview.

When you render in AE and bring your renders into FCP…remember you want to render at the same frame size as your timeline…you will probably need to adjust your clip, once on your timeline for proper aspect. This can be found by double-clicking a clip in the timeline to bring it into the viewer…then go to the motion tab and twirl open ‘distort’ and set aspect to 0. It probably defaulted to 33.33.

This applies to bringing 16:9 rendered clips into a 16:9 timeline.

Hope this helps

Carey Dissmore

[Kevin Mcquade]

Ahhh yes, now it is sooo clear! I understood that 16:9 was just a re-configuration of pixels, but I wasn’t sure how this translated into settings for the programs, I’m a bit of a jack of all trades here. Basically I AM the creative department, so I am playing catch up on a lot of this stuff… hence why I post so often on the different forums here.

Thanks for the tip, and uh… no hard feelings ; -)

Kevin