[David Butterfield]

Thanks Mark. Will look into this. Certainly learning more about Compressor everyday. Meanwhile, still find it odd that I can’t get a letterbox out of Conversion, or by putting the HD sequence into an SD timeline. In both cases FCP pillar boxes and squeezes the image on the vertical axis. The check box for preserving aspect ratio via latterbox on Conversion is ignored in the former case, and a pillar box appears to be automatic on the latter. Insights on this appreciated.

[David Butterfield]

I agree. HD for the people!

[David Butterfield]

Alex, thanks for your reply.

The deliverable is a dv/NTSC sd 4:3 of an HD (DVC PRO 720p) originated program.

Here’s exactly what I’m doing from the HD timeline:

Export using Compressor

Destination Desktop
Setting DV/NTSC
Double click that to open Inspector
Click Preview to slide out to a frame to view

Inpector > Encoder
DV/DVCPRO NTSC
Quality: Best
Scan mode : Progressive
Aspect ratio: 4:3 OK

Linear PCM 48Khz 16 bit OK

No setting in Frame Controls or Filters

Inspector > Geometry
Cropping: “Custom” with all settings 0
Frame Size: 720 x 480
Pixel Aspect Ratio: NTSC CCIR 601/dv
Padding: 16 x 9 1.78:1

At this point the Preview image goes into a letterbox, overall size 16 x 9 (identical to the original source) and the image inside the padding is severely scrunched.

This is where I usually turned back, kicked the dog, and tried new settings. Except this time I went ahead and submitted the export. Lo and behold it worked. The image is bad SD with jagged text, but at least the aspect ratio and letterbox are there.

So the sticking point here is that Preview was showing me a letterbox but a smashed image. Preview is not a preview at all. The lesson, skip Preview and just export your test; Preview does not show you what you’ll get.

Again it’s an ugly export but at least it meets the criteria. Any suggestions on improving the image quality appreciated.

MANY THANKS FOR TAKING THE TIME TO HELP WITH THIS!

[David Butterfield]

Kevin, thanks for your response. We aren’t capitulating to that just yet because it burdens the company. Dozens of commercials and shorts need to go from HD to SD. We want FCP to work as advertised and export letterboxed versions.

When I’m vacuuming the rug and the machine won’t pick up a bit of lint, I pick up the lint and examine it, then put it back down and give the vacuum another chance. If it doesn’t work I take apart the vacuum and try to see what’s wrong. That’s where we are on this.

I need to export from HD to SD letterboxed and FCP won’t do it, apparently, unless we re-do all the timelines??? Quick tabulation is that creating dozens of new timelines, rendering, and exports will cost hours.

Can we just fix the vacuum? Or maybe we should get out of FCP and into a system that will not have this problem in the future?

Pretty frustrated, but again, thanks for your suggestion.