Working with 4:3 and 16:9

[Robb Harriss]

this happens, or used to happen, a lot to us because older footage was 4×3 Digibeta. It was a WS model and I turned on the 16:9 when I started with the company, so there was a lot of mixed footage even in SD. When we switched to HDCAM about 7 years ago the problem only got worse.
I just try to determine what the majority of my footage is going to be, and what the output/distribution format is. Nowadays it’s almost always 16:9 DVD and then Web formats of various flavors up to 1280×720, all of which we consider low resolution. In this case the 4:3 footage is reframed and enlarge to fill the 16:9 frame. A fair amount of work goes into grading the footage to diminish the visual differences. In the few projects where the 4:3 is dominant I’ll reload the HD footage using 4:3 center coming out of the HD deck. Both work well. No, we’re not doing HD-DVD or BlueRay for external consumption. Our customers aren’t setup to deal with it.

Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.

[Bret Williams]

You’ve got a couple things to think about. I’ll assume your output is SD DVD.

Now, decide if your audience is watching on 4:3 screens or LCD.

If 4:3, you can retain all the quality by working in 4:3 and cropping off the sides of your 16:9 footage. However if watched on a 16:9 LCD it will be pillarboxed, and you’ve lost the image on left and right forever.

Your other good 4:3 option is to work in an SD anamorphic sequence. Blow up the 4:3 material to crop off the top and bottom to taste. When watched on 4:3, the blown up 4:3 is essentially refused back to it’s normal size and the 16:9 is reduced to smaller than actual size. So both images are full quality or better. If this method is viewed on 16:9 LCD the 16:9 fills the screen, as does the cropped 4:3. The difference is the 4:3 will be blown up extremely by comparison.

This latter option of working in 16:9 retains the quality of the majority of your footage, and is the most versatile. It can always be dropped into a 4:3 sequence when you’re done, so it’s the obvious choice.

[Phillip Grondin]

Thanks for your help guys! That answers my question.