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Square pixels my FOOT
I can see that a lot of people are having the problem that I am about to describe, but none of the solutions that have been proposed seem to work. So here it is again, in as complete detail as I can describe.
I am editing a sequence with source footage that was captured outside of my workstation, intermingled with source footage that I have captured. Some of the source footage has a square pixel format, some has CCIR601 formatted pixels. The sequence is destined for 720×480, non-square pixels.
Now, the first thing I notice when I set the non-square pixel clips into the sequence is that it appears to be too small for the frame. Nothing that a little resizing won’t help, and it appears to be undistorted, and also appears to have the appropriate 3:2 aspect ratio.
When I play the clip, the footage distorts, maintaining the frame size but playing as if a 640×480 clip was stretched to 720×480. Thus, some of the original frame (strangely, off the right hand side of the frame) is lost.
In Quicktime, these clips have the format “DV, 720×480 (640×480), Millions.”
Is there a way I can force FCP to “forget about” the 640×480 framing and use the entire 720×480 frame? Would I need to convert every clip that does this in some way? If there’s anyone that has successfully dealt with this problem, even superficially, please get back to me.
–M.
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11 Replies
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[Virtualpants] “Now, the first thing I notice when I set the non-square pixel clips into the sequence is that it appears to be too small for the frame. Nothing that a little resizing won’t help, and it appears to be undistorted, and also appears to have the appropriate 3:2 aspect ratio.
When I play the clip, the footage distorts, maintaining the frame size but playing as if a 640×480 clip was stretched to 720×480. Thus, some of the original frame (strangely, off the right hand side of the frame) is lost.”
Are these clips rendered? Do you have the Scale and Distort set correctly to fill the frame? I’ve never heard of footage being set one way in the timeline and then playing a different way.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Huh. You appear to be correct; I produced the sequence and none of the aforementioned footage is distended. I guess all I need is for the footage to be shown accurately in the timeline, but it’s not as dire as I thought it was.
Oh well. Thanks for the heads up.
–M.
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[Virtualpants] “Huh. You appear to be correct; I produced the sequence and none of the aforementioned footage is distended. I guess all I need is for the footage to be shown accurately in the timeline, but it’s not as dire as I thought it was.”
You were looking at the footage from the Viewer? FCP will not show “mismatched” footage correctly until it is put into the timeline and set up correctly for that timeline and your easy setup. in the Viewer, FCP stretches and scales footage into whatever format you’ve chosen for your Easy Setup.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Huh. You appear to be correct; I produced the sequence and none of the aforementioned footage is distended. I guess all I need is for the footage to be shown accurately in the timeline, but it’s not as dire as I thought it was.
Oh well. Thanks for the heads up.
–M.
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How do you set up clips to be viewed correctly in the Viewer? I have seen no means by which I can disregard pixel format either in clip settings or sequence settings, nor have I discovered a way to convert pixel format on the fly. Am I missing something?
Thanks for the info.
–M. -
FWIW – if you place 720×486 into a DV (720×480) timeline, FCP will shrink the footage to about 98% to make it fit vertically, which is of course the completely incorrect thing for it to do. Change it back to 100%, and move the image down one pixel to maintain correct field order.
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[Bret Williams] “FWIW – if you place 720×486 into a DV (720×480) timeline, FCP will shrink the footage to about 98% to make it fit vertically, which is of course the completely incorrect thing for it to do. Change it back to 100%, and move the image down one pixel to maintain correct field order.”
Actually it doesn’t shrink it in my experience. It just moves it one scan line down. Same with DV into a D1 timeline, it just moves the footage one scan line.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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It scales it to 98%, preserving the width attribute, unlike AE, which would always match the scanlines. But if your machine doesn’t scale the image down to fit the whole thing within 480 scan lines that’s great. All machines I’ve worked on scale the 486 scan lines down to fit within 480. Leaves a little black on the left and right.
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[Bret Williams] “It scales it to 98%, preserving the width attribute, unlike AE, which would always match the scanlines. But if your machine doesn’t scale the image down to fit the whole thing within 480 scan lines that’s great. All machines I’ve worked on scale the 486 scan lines down to fit within 480. Leaves a little black on the left and right.”
Bret, I’m not saying you don’t see this, but I just did a test right now and I’m seeing exactly as I describe. 720×486 clip dropped into a DV timeline. Scale is still 100% and it has been dropped 1 pixel. I can clearly see in Image and Wireframe how the image goes off screen a little top and bottom.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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That’s great! It only took FCP 6 years to get it right. Because today I’m working on a 4.5 machine, and we have some kona uncompressed clips. Dropping them in a DV timeline scales them back to 98.77 percent. I don’t doubt that 5.1.2 is doing it right. I’ve got a 5.1.2 machine here and I’ll give it a test.
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