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Unexpected change in aspect ratio and playback oddity
I shot about 20 minutes of 16:9, 60i with a Canon XL2 and captured it all in FCP.
These were six or so individual clips one after the other. There was a timecode break, so I ended up with two files.
The first “keeper” section I moved to the timeline caused the system to ask if I wanted to change the settings to that of the clip. I clicked yes.
Same, I think, for the second clip. However when I look at the second clip videos, they are all letter boxed on the canvass, even though the master shots are 16:9 full frame.
I have no clue what I did to make this happen. Nothing I do (or have done yet) corrects that. Is there a way to get full frame 16:9 back once it’s gone? I clicked around on the settings but nothing worked. I eventually went back to the master files I had imported again and made separate projects for each of the five segments instead of opening them as sequences within the same project.
Also, I noticed in rendering out that on one of the QT movies, I left the yellow arrow in the middle of the timeline. After the QT movie rendered and I opened it, the whole movie was there, but the movie opened ready to be played in the middle of the file where the arrow had been.
Is this a “feature” that can be disabled, or a “gotcha” that most people run into eventually?
Regards,
Ty Ford
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5 Replies
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I’d like to get in on this one as well. I am exporting to quicktime. Using the Export > quicktime compression. My FCP is 16:9 and regardless of the settings i choose it always comes out as 4:3. Any thoughts?. I thought it might be a similar issue to Ty’s. Cheers
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Hello Ben,
I’ve been through the “can’t get it out of the box at 16:9” syndrome. That’s a little different than what’s going on here. At least I think it is. For me the answer to that was to use a 16:9 anamorphic setting in the advanced export folder in Compressor. A guy here locally showed me that one. Since then, things have been better.
Among other things, don’t get caught up in what the capture window is showing you during capture, I don’t think the capture window knows what to do with 16:9 (at least from my machine) but it doesn’t seem to matter once I get the video in.
My problem was that half of my clips on canvas were fine and the other half weren’t and I don’t think I changed anything.
I remember someone talking about some sort of digital flag or data marker recorded and generated by a camera that needed to be recognized for 16:9 to show properly. The string I read seemed to say that some cameras didn’t have the ability to generate the proper data to tell FCP that the video was 16:9. I don’t know how fragile that flag is, or how cavalier FCP may be with it. If that’s not it, someone please correct me.
For these current clips, I used the output setting in Compressor suggested by Ken Stone for how to make your clips for YouTube. Wow, I never knew there were so many settings. Has Apple made FCP infinitely adjustable to its own detriment? These settings, btw, preserved the 16:9. You can see them, if you like at https://idisk.mac.com/tyreeford-Public
They are in a folder called “GuitarsOfPikesville.”
Hope this has been of some help.
Finally, I’ve been producing audio for years. Does anyone else have problems with the way audio is handled in FCP or Soundtrack Pro? Is it just me? Seems like the GUI was created by people who never operated pro audio gear.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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thanks ty. Will do.
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Ty,
Can you tell me how you imported/exported that video clip? it looks great and despite me having a Canon XL2 I’ve yet to export footage that looks that clean. Thanks for any help you might be able to supply…
glenn
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Hello Glenn,
Thanks so much for the compliment. I’m learning video and lighting every nano second and it’s not always easy for me. Sometimes FCP spanks me pretty hard. I shot 60i, 16:9. Standard XL2 lens.
I used a one panel mottled charcoal backdrop and brought the lights in close enough to the talent so the exposure difference made it look really black. You can see the left and right edges when I pull back because I didn’t have the full 10′ x 24′ background up yet. I think the f stop was 2.8 and the shutter about 1/75. I lucked out by having the biax 4 where it was because it allowed me to dig her black blouse out of the charcoal background.
(I know because I did a post mortem the next day and my wife was wearing a black sweater. I tried one of my Lowel Pro lights and it just didn’t have the right stuff — too small an area and not as white. When I put the biax 4 back up her blouse popped as the penny whistle players blouse did.)
I had three point lighting. A dimmed 650 Ianiro Red Head for the back light. A Lowel Pro for the camera left fill and a mole richardson biax 4 dimmable fluorescent as a key light.
The piece with just the guitar player is more evenly lit if color temperature matters. Having them both together meant I had to spread the light a bit and you can see some color differences between the left and right sides due to the different lights, but it’s not a deal killer. (maybe adds a bit of interest..I don’t know)
Import was 16:9, DV anamorphic 48 kHz audio
When I dragged the clips to the timeline, the FCP prompt asked me if I wanted to change the timeline settings to match that of the clips. I said OK.
Ken Stone Published an article about compressing for Youtube sometime back, I followed those settings as closely as I could but sometimes my choices were simply not the ones he was talking about. Maybe due to different versions of FCP, dunno. I used one of the quality sliders to get each clip as close to 100MB as possible, because that’s YouTube’s limit.
Thanks again for your kind comments. I hope this helps.
Regards,
Ty Ford
Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Watch Ty play guitar
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