Square pixels

[Tom Wolsky]

If I understand the question, the answer is no. It’s like saying can I have a round ball that’s square. DV uses rectangular pixels. You can make a square pixel sequence, but DV will not fit it correctly.

All the best,

Tom

Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 2 Editing Workshop” Class on Demand “Complete Training for FCP5” DVD

[Tore Jonssen]

I see. I have this project that’s going to be used for a flash presentation. The programmer wants video files with square pixels. So how do I convert it?

[Phil]

Capture your footage as normal, then:

Make a new sequence, and in the Sequence Settings: Frame Size box, put NTSC Sq. (4:3) as the aspect ratio. then render out…(you may have to scale to fit)….

if your web guy needs you to render out a smaller frame size for him, just output using Quicktime Compression, and choose 320X240 as the comp size….i’m pretty sure those are square pixels….

[David Roth weiss]

Tore,

Find out exactly why the programmer wants video with square pixels and post that reason here. I think you’re liable to get some very interesting responses. Typically you will find that Flash programmers know a lot about Web stuff and very little about video.

DRW

[Tore Jonssen]

The programmer says he’s experienced in this field, and that he gets jagged edges and blurry footage (source footage is green screen done in a studio, finished key looks fine on my monitor) due to the difference in the pixel aspect ratio.
I’ve exported Quicktime Animation codec with millions of colors+ for him to use.
Is he right or wrong?

[Jeff Carpenter]

I’m not familiar with Flash. If it doesn’t correct the pixels itself then giving him DV video will result in a stretched image. I’m sure that’s what he’s thinking. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. It would seem to me that Flash WOULD correct for this and he doesn’t need a square-pixel file. But again, I don’t know Flash. I could be wrong.

To give him what he’s asking for, what you’re looking to make, Tore, is an image that’s 640×480 with square pixels. Look in the QuickTime export options to see which codecs you can manually adjust those settings on. Perhaps a motion-JPEG or animation codec video? I’m not really sure, you’ll have to experiment.

[David Roth weiss]

Tore,

I would certainly post this issue on the Flash Forum and see what the gurus there say on the square pixel issue. I’ve never heard of that before with regard to video export to Flash, but maybe this new info.

With regard to export as Quicktime Animation codec with millions of colors+, that’s appropriate if you need the alpha channel, if noty then all you need to do export as Quicktime Animation codec with millions of colors and not the +. That makes the files smaller.

DRW

[Bryce Whiteside]

What else do you have to work with, Adobe After Effects, Apple Motion, Sorenson Media Compression Suite ( https://www.sorensontech.com/ )?

Resizing in FCP 4.5 or less would not be my choosen production pipeline except to capture and output to a program like After Effects which has very good sub-pixel sampling.

It is my understanding if you get him a square pixel QuickTime .mov, Flash MX 2004 will File->Import a Quicktime movie will automatically convert it to Flash format.

My 2

[Ed Dooley]

I don’t understand his problem. Video can be imported into Flash to be embedded or linked. It’s done
all the time. You can import regular MOVs, AVIs, DV, or MPEGs. On Windows
machines you can also use WMVs if Direct X9 or later is installed. All of these are rectangular pixels! I’ve done
a bunch of QTs from FCP to FLVs without the jaggies or blurriness (UC 8bit 720×486 D1 rectangular pixels).
It’s no different than when you compress a video from a QT out of FCP or any other editor to a MOV, WMV, or MPEG.
They all start as rectangular pixels. For example, in Squeeze, the default for compressing video to FLVs is
Maintain Aspect Ratio. Maybe I’m missing something.
Ed