[Carsten Orlt]

Your are not mad!
it is actually quite easy when you know what is happening.
PAL Standard definition is 720×576, no matter if 4-3 aspect ratio or 16-9 ratio.
Only difference between 4-3 and 16-9 is the shape of each pixel in the matrix. This is the reason why a 16-9 aspect ratio frame looks stretch on a 4-3 ratio TV.
Now your QuickTime player works basically like a TV in this regard. If you open a 720×576 sized PAL SD file in QT the player doesn’t know what aspect ratio of your pixels are as this is not embedded in the metadata of the .mov file. Also the QT has no simple ’16-9′ button to display a 16-9 720×576 file correctly because it basically operates with displaying every pixel always as a square one. So you found out correctly that you have to change the properties to 1024×576 to get the proper aspect ratio (which equals 16-9 in square pixels). Now this change in the Quicktime file only changes the way it is displayed not the actual file itself (which is still 720×576 with 16-9 pixel aspect ratio).
FCP has the 16-9 ‘button’ hence you don’t need to fiddle with the display size.
If you change the display size as you did and give this modified .mov file to somebody else it really depends on the software they are using. Does it correctly handle the aspect ratio?
Most likely scenario is that they have to tell their software that it should interpret the 720×576 pixels as 16-9 aspect ratio.
In the end of the day it is only a matter how you ‘display’ the 720×576 pixels of your PAL SD frame.

As I’m not a technician some technical things might be incorrect and everybody feel free to correct me.
Hope this helps.

[Carsten Orlt]

is either of your audio patches (timeline) disconnected? if yes by editing the stereo file you only getting one channel/track.
easiest fix: control-click in the bottom audio part on any of the lock symbols and select ‘reset’panel’ from the menu. this should reset A1/A2 source to A1/A2 target.

can’t see any other possibility!?

[Carsten Orlt]

done it many times w. compressor 2.
just choose one of the NTSC formats from the presets (including DVD formats).
important! you have to change the following as the presets don’t have frame control enabled (at least in vers2)
you have to use frame controls and set the resize to ‘better’ and rate conversion to ‘better’ too (‘good’ for rate conversion is not good enough 🙂
no need to go to any higher settings.

This format conversion is good enough for any kind of screeners, but if it is for broadcast I would still recommend to go to a post house to make the conversion through some high end box. But I might be wrong and the quality could be good enough through compressor, i just don’t want to go throuhg the hassle to master in ntsc…..

[Carsten Orlt]

can it be that you created the project originally in vers 5.1.x ?
maybe because Apple changed things under the hood projects created and captured in pre vers 6 might cause problems in the latter?

[Carsten Orlt]

could it be that the transition you having problem with doesn’t have enough handle length on one side (either in or out)?

[Carsten Orlt]

canvas – view – dynamic guides
if it is selected and they don’t show, press N on your keyboard to switch on ‘snapping’ to guides/grids etc.

[Carsten Orlt]

[Dale Launer] “That’s interesting. I don’t think it applies, but it is interesting. But wouldn’t that just show up as squeezed image? “

your right Dale. it doesn’t apply. it was a shot in the dark, but after you posted your problem has to do with gamma, i knew i was of target 🙂

i think mpe’s guess is the best: rgb vers. yuv
what is your HD codec you exporting from in fcp? and how did you capture it? i don’t know the cinewave so i don’t know if it could cause the problem.

[Carsten Orlt]

ups wrong guess 🙂

[Carsten Orlt]

most likely to do with pixel aspect ratio.
what format is your HD footage? if it is not full raster 1920×1080 and square pixel ratio the QT player doesn’t compensate to display the footage correctly at 16-9.
If you for instance have 1440×1080 then you’ll see that FCP has a pixel aspect ratio for 1440×1080 and not square (sequence-settings or command-zeroto check). In this case FCP compensates correctly for display but QT player just displays the footage with out pixel aspect ratio compensation.

[Carsten Orlt]

have a look at https://www.spherico.de/filmtools/
TitleExchange might give you what you want (not sure as I don’t use it) and a bit more functions re subtitles. you can download a demo too.