[Andy Mees]

Thanks again for keeping us updated on this Daniel
Best
Andy

[Andy Mees]

A one size fits all (and free) option to check is Piero Fiorani’s Quarter PIP plugin : https://web.mac.com/piero.fiorani/PieroF_FCE_Effect/Quarter_PIP.html

But this isn’t a hard thing to do yourself just as David described above … I would probably set up my 3 sequences separately and then nest those sequences into the master sequence on the 3 separate tracks, cropping and reframing each as required tho, rather than doing it for each clip.

[Andy Mees]

if you have set your Easy Setup for HDV capture and refreshed the A/V devices and still get no joy with your camera/deck then the chances are high that your camera/deck is currently set to downconvert the output to (SD) DV. Check your camera/deck settings and if found then turn OFF downconvert.

[Andy Mees]

OK. DV is a native 4:3 format. If you are recording as 16:9 then what you are really doing is recording an Anamorphic 16:9 image … that’s a 16:9 image distorted so as to fill the full 4:3 image area. It is only 16:9 in the viewfinder and when played back as 16:9, but on tape it is strictly 4:3. What you may be seeing is your footage being played back non-anamorphically ie in its native 4:3 format. To have FCP treat it correctly you simply need to tell the app that the footage is to be treated as Anamorphic. You can do this during capture by specifying a relevant Anamorphic capture preset eg DV PAL Anamorphic or DV NTSC Anamorphic, you can also add this Anamorphic tag after the fact by simply marking it as such either in the Browser window (in List View you can scroll through the columns to display Anamorphic column and then click in that column to mark a clip as such), or you can flag a clip as such in the clip’s Item Properties > Format tab (Cmd 9).

Let us know if that fixes your issue

Best
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Hey Jeff
The “Widescreen” filter is a wast of space 🙁 IMHO its far better to add your widescreen as a matte on an upper layer. You can do this with a simple matte created in Photoshop, or you can take a Slug (or Solid Color generator) and use FCP’s “Mask Shape” filter to cut out the center, or you can crop a couple of Slugs … or you can download a free Letterbox generator plugin off the web or a matte someone else has created and is sharing online. A couple of minutes on Google will sort you out.
Best
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Hey Jeff
I guess I’m not really understanding the need to have the wireframe fit the specific cropped clip area but nonetheless, sorry no, I’m not aware of any means to do this beyond perhaps creating a nest of the cropped clip with a custom frame size.

Just a thought … if your issue with dealing with the cropped image is that subsequent motion adjustments are off center, then it may be that all you need do is re-center the Anchor Point … change to the distort tool, click on the old anchor point (that would be the center of the pre-cropped image) and drag it to the center of the cropped image area.

Here’s an nice tutorial covering aspects of dealing with the anchor point in FCP: https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/anchor_point_andrew.html

Good luck
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Hey Jeff

You’ll need to adjust the Scale and Center parameters accordingly in the Basic Motion control section of the clip instances Motion tab. You can also do this directly in the Canvas window when in Image and Wireframe (or Wireframe only) mode by dragging on the corner control points (to resize) and anywhere within the frame (to re-center)

Best
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Hey Swami
Here is another one for you to check out: https://www.frameline.tv
Best
Andy

[Andy Mees]

The FX7 shoots both HDV and DV formats Bogdan … which one did you shoot and how/which format did you capture?

[Andy Mees]

Yep thats the one you need Bergen … XML v4 (or earlier) for FCP6
Best
Andy