Working with Square pixel images and DV footage in one timeline

[Bret Williams]

Edit the stills in a sequence matching the video. Or place the stills sequence into the video sequence. Any which way, there’s no conflict.

But there’s no reason to be using a square pixel sequence for your stills. You’re just confusing the issue.

[Christopher Pavsek]

why not just make a sequence for your video–a sequence set up for DV–and edit in your stills. Even if they are square pixels, you will be fine. In recent versions FCP automatically senses that the images are square pixeled and adjusts their aspect ratio for you. Try to import an image and then insert it in a timeline. Then double click on the image/clip in the timeline to open it in the viewer. CLick on the motion tab and under “distort” the aspect ratio will have changed.

[Ed Dooley]

Did anyone crop or process the stills in Photoshop first? There’s a setting for non-square that’s
been a part of PS for the last few versions. Maybe it’s too late for this time, but that’s where to start
next time. I never bring raw photos right into FCP. I always start with cropping, levels, etc. in PS.
Ed

[Dananderiq]

If I bring the stills into a standard video sequence, FCP automatically distorts the images 12.5% and places black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. This creates 2 problems.

1. I add editing about a thousand high res stills and adding an extra distort motion filter will slow my work flow do soooooo much.
2. I am repositioning each shot, one at a time to mathc the shot before. Mostly just chanign the center point of each shot. If I distort all the photos at the end after I’ve adjusted the shots, will the photo’s no longer be properly adjusted because the distort throws it off?
3. Even if I do distort the images, I eiher need to crop in an extra 6% of have black bars on the top an bottom. I was planning on matching the entire video as 4:3 and I was also planning on needing the extra 6% on the edge of each photos.

Is there a way to save this?

4. I know in theory I could batch distort all the photo’s in photoshop first so I don’t need to render them in FCP, but I’m not really sure how to actually do this. Could someone point me in the right direction. Can photoshop CS I do this alone or do I need a plugin?

Thanks

[Bret Williams]

FCP is doing the distort for you. Automatically. Drop them in the timeline and start placing them. There’s nothing else to do. That’s it. All you have to do. The 12% distort is correct. If you need to remove or add it, you can copy and paste attributes to all 1000 pics at once.