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aspect ratio question

Hello all,

this footage Im using imported into FCP as 720 x 480 regular ntsc footage. In final cut the video displayes with a letterbox. Unfortunately I went ahead and edited everything before asking questions about this letterbox. So now im running into problems, I know Im doing this after the fact, but I cannot recapture and re-edit (although my suspicion is that the black bars were generated in the camera and thus were captured as part of the footage). Im am trying to build a dvd with this edited sequence in DVDSP.
I figured out that the actual footage (not including the black bars) is 720 x 360, which is very weird, I know. So to have my movie display correctly on a wide-screen and 4:3 tv, it would have to be at a 16:9 aspect ratio.

OK, Ive tried so many things, but I cant get it right.
1st, I made a new sequence in FCP changed this sequence to anamorphic. Then I copied my regualr sequence and pasted into new sequence, then I right click and choose remove all attributes/distort. It removes the letterbox but it sqeezes the footage vertically since my footage is 720 x 360, not 720 x 404... So this wont work...
Then I exported from FCP directly into compressor and I chose a 16:9 NTSC preset and crop 38 of top and 38 of bottom. The footage is now not sqeezed in any way and only a small letterbox remains (which I can live with) but the problem is, no matter what setting I use: DVD 90 minute best quality or increase bit rate, change gop, the footage looks aweful. Any time there is just a slight movement it has horizontal bars through it. Now, Its not the cropping, because it does it without cropping as well.

My questions are:
Is compressor just not that good? because when I ue a reference quicktime and let DVDSP do the encoding it looks great.
If I cant use compressot to crop how can I get a final m2v file that has a aspect ratio of 16:9 and doesnt get sqeezed...

Im sorry for this long post, just wanted to be clear on everything, please help!
Thank you! Danielle

Im using FCP 5.1, compressor 2 and DVDSP 4, footage came from regular dv camera (obviously set to some weird widesreen format) and I captured it directly into FCP

MacPro / macbook pro, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Sep 21, 2007 5:55 AM

Reply
7 replies

Sep 21, 2007 6:19 AM in response to Danielle Smit

Hi:

Your footage is letterboxed on tape. No way to make an 16:9 native editing.

All you can do is creating a new anamorphic sequence, copy the 4:3 sequence on it and scale it up 134% to fill the anamorphic space. That will cause some loos of quality. No other way to play it full screen in widescreen TVs.

Export this anamorphic sequence using the 16:9 preset and in DVDSP set your track Display Mode: 16:9 letterbox. That way it will play full screen in 16:9 screens and letterboxed in regular TVs.

Hope that helps !

User uploaded file
Alberto

Sep 21, 2007 7:45 AM in response to Silal

Thank you for your reply!
It worked! thank you so much, ive been struggling with this for a while now! I defenitely have a loss of quality, I will have to watch it on my big plasma at home to make sure it is still ok.

Can I ask you another question?
When I export using compressor I get horizontal lines in the video, no matter the settings, Ive tried: dvd best quality 90 minutes 16:9 preset and customized a dvd 16:9 one with very high bit rates, and different GOP settings.
when I export with quicktime reference and import into DVDSP, it looks much better with their build in encoder.. since I have this loss of quality now, any suggestions on my compressor settings?
Ive already resigned to 2 DVD's with the main movie on one and the extras on the other, so we can go pretty high with bit rates.

Thanks again!
Danielle

Sep 21, 2007 8:04 AM in response to Silal

I see the lines when I use simulator in DVDSP, cant burn DVD yet, Im on the road. And yes with the new 16:9's I just created the track display is set to 16:9 as well as simulator, I thought that was the most accurate way of telling how something would look on a tv, but I will definitely try on real tv and see what happens.
So you think that on a tv you might not see them then?
Thanks!

Sep 21, 2007 8:11 AM in response to Danielle Smit

Hi:

Don't use Simulator for judging your footage. It's intended just to test your navigation. You can build in your hard drive and open the VIDEO_TS folder with DVD Player. Ussually by default DVD player deinterlace the image and you don't see that effect.

About the SOlved button, it's a problem with the system:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1134242

User uploaded file
Alberto

aspect ratio question

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