Aspect ratio weirdness, and self contained vs not self contained to Youtube
Why does Final Cut Express 4 export Quicktime movies as 720x480 when the movie's size is apparently 477x357? It just stretches it out. Also can you not upload a Quicktime movie that is NOT self contained to Youtube?
2.2 MHz Intel Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro,
Mac OS X (10.5.4),
2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
720x480 is the standard size for DV. That's the format your sequence is probably set to. I have no idea where 477x357 came from, but there is no video format with that dimension. That may be the setting of the canvas size, but that's not the video.
No, you can't upload a reference movie to YouTube. A reference movie will only play on a machine that has access to the media and the render files.
-Guess I was hoping the reference movie would "reference" and upload the clip(s) it contains ha.
-In FCE when I go into export/options/size, if I click on dimensions and click "current" (current size) it says 477x357. There is a setting on my old Canon Elura to record in 16:9, but I did not have that selected, so I assume the footage is recorded at 4:3 (doesn't say in the manual, I searched the pdf version). There also doesn't seem to be any setup settings in FCE other than 720x480 (yeah okay maybe I should record at 16:9 from now on). Finally when I open the exported Quicktime movie which I specified to export as "Current" size (or 477x357), in movie properties/visual settings in Quicktime Pro it says its 720x480 and it does indeed look stretched out horizontally. It also says 720x480 as the dimensions if I do a "Get Info". So I then go into quicktime movie properties and scale the size to 477x357 and save it again and the video seems to have normal proportions again. Maybe I should just scale it to 640x480 and save it, that sounds equivalent to 477x357 as far as proportions go. Right? Isn't there a way to keep the video proportions the same across all apps? Doesn't make any sense. Hope that's clear lol.
477x357 is probably the current size of the canvas. It doesn't mean anything. What you do when you export depends on where you're trying to get to. Without knowing that there is no way to say what you should do.
