[D James]

Thanks Tangier

As a matter of fact I did try setting the aspect ratio to -33% and that scales the image nicely back to letterbox format, but with the same old shimmer problem. I think the basic problem is that Final Cut’s own rendering capabilities going from anamorphic to letterbox are simply not strong enough to handle images with a lot of fine detail.

The solution I have come up with is to export the anamorphic edit as a Quick Time from FCP and re-render it in After Effects in 8 bit uncompressed FCP codec using the stretch feature in the render parameters (“stretching” down to 720 360 with stretch quality on “high”) This, by the way, gives a much cleaner result than scaling the image inside the composition window itself.

I then take that render and paste it back into After Effects in a 720 480 composition to get the black at the top and bottom and render another pass, still at the same FCP codec. You bring that back into Final Cut with the sequence settings at 8 bit uncompressed and you get a letterbox image with much less shimmer. The file sizes are much bigger than with DV codec but that’s the price of quality!

Cheers, James.

[D James]

I have checked as many sequence settings as I can in regards to field dominance, codecs and the like and nothing seems to work.

I have resorted to resizing the Quick Time export from FCP in After Effects using the stretch feature, and the result looks crystal clear on the Quick Time viewer. When I try to import that same Quick Time into FCP it looks all shimmery even though I rendered it with FCP codecs and matched the field dominance to my sequence (Lower field first, as it is DV footage)

Not sure what else to do. Thanks for the help anyway…

James.

[D James]

Charles,

Thank you so much for all that information. We can certainly try that technique for the DVD, however we still have the additional problem of having to print this documentary onto Betacam.

We would need to be able to do this directly from Final Cut, as trying to print a video image onto Betacam from a DVD just won’t cut the mustard.

It seems rather strange to me that Final Cut doesn’t feature a simple resizing filter that gives you a clean letterbox image (for analog output) from anamorphic footage. The technique of putting anamorphic clips into a non-anamorphic timeline produces terrible artifacting. Didn’t Apple know that people might need to print this sort of program directly to Betacam?

Just wondering… Thanks again,

James

[D James]

Hi Martin

Thanks for your reply. The steps you listed were actually the first thing we tried, with the exception that I imported a quick time of the anamorphic export and not the sequence itself. (I just re-tried your technique of dragging an anamorphic sequence into a non-anamorphic one and it doesn’t resize it)

The shimmering we’re getting is apparent on both the canvas screen and the NTSC monitor. It’s at its worst when the camera tilts up and down.

Any other suggestions are most welcome. Cheers,

James.