Forcing external monitor to letterbox

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Forcing external monitor to letterbox

I am working in an anamorphic timeline and have just realized that it is absolutely mandatory to use an external broadcast monitor to do any color work in FCP. Well, I dont have the adequate monitor to do this and instead am just using a 13" color TV instead. I am using a miniDV cam as the pass thru to the monitor. This works 100x better than not having anything at all, but my problem is not being able to force a letterboxed display on the tv. Is there a setting somewhere that I can force this? I am new to FCP and have used this same TV as an external monitor with Sony Vegas and it always forced the letterboxed display. This is not a setting on the TV either as it doesnt have the option to use wide or 4:3. ANY help at all with this, whether I am missing something or if I am ******* up a rope (and why) would be greatly appreciated.

IMac 2.8 Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Dec 27, 2009 12:14 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 27, 2009 3:18 PM in response to Flat_Broke

Why would this be necessary for color correction?

The only way I can think of to do this, given your hardware limitations, would be to create a 4:3 timeline, then copy and paste your anamorphic sequence clips into it. This will cause them to be letterboxed, but they would be squished in this timeline. You would not want to keep it like that for final output as you're wasting resolution.

Patrick

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Answer 2

Dec 27, 2009 4:39 PM in response to Patrick Sheffield

Actually drag your 16:9 sequence from the browser to a 4:3 timeline to nest it and it will display letterboxed. Double click on the nest in the 4:3 timeline to make changes. Not ideal, but it works.

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Answer 3

Flat_Broke Author

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Dec 27, 2009 5:56 PM in response to Michael Grenadier

That works! Patrick, I am assuming you meant why do I need to have the monitor force letterbox to color correct, and not why I need the external monitor to color correct? I just am looking for the precise output visual. However, let me make sure I understand this correctly that dropping the 16:9 sequence on a 4:3 timeline is just for visual purposes ONLY. When I double click the nest, it should open up the 16:9 sequence to do the actual edit. The nest on the 4:3 sequence should automatically update with the latest edit? There just seems to be alot of flip flopping between sequences and thats more than enough to get me to screw something up! Again, I come from Sony Vegas where file management isnt nearly as important as FCP so forgive my ignorance.

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