What settings should I use for FCP anaporphic sequence?/ Online editing?

[Barend Onneweer]

Well, it all depends on the finishing format and settings. If it’s NTSC throughout the production, and there’s no plan to up-res to some flavour of HD, chances are that the project is finished in NTSC anamorphic widescreen, and those would be the settings to use.

But it’s really a matter of getting more information.

Bar3nd

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[Ralph Keyser]

With the danger of hi-jacking this thread, can someone explain NTSC anamorphic widescreen? I understand it for film (I think). You use special lenses when you shoot that squeeze a wider view onto the film than normal, then matching special lenses when you project to return the wider view to the screen. If you were to look at the film shot with these anamorphic lenses, things in the image would be too tall and skinny. So, how does this work with NTSC given that there is no special lens to return the image to “normal”?

Thanks!

[Steve Roberts]

Computer monitors use square pixels. As a result, 640 pixels by 480 pixels on a computer screen looks 4:3, as you’d expect.

However, the NTSC TV spec calls for 720 pixels by 480 (or 486) pixels to look 4:3 on a TV.

Huh? 720×480 is not 4:3. Wassup?
This actually works if the pixels are not square. In this case, the pixels are tall rectangles, so 720×480 works out to 4:3. So when a 720×480 image is played on a TV, the image looks right, because it displays tall pixels.

DV widescreen (or 16:9, not anamorphic) is also 720×480 pixels, but the pixels are not square, nor are they tall. They are actually wide: 1.2 to 1. However, if you tell AE that the footage is NTSC widescreen, it interprets the footage properly. Look in the help under “pixel aspect ratio correction” for more info.

So it’s not lenses, it’s pixel aspect ratio: square, tall, or wide.

Check out this article by Rick Gerard.

There’s also more info in the help. Search using “widescreen” and “pixel aspect ratio correction”, as mentioned.

Steve