Creating Pillarboxed 4:3 images for 16:9 DVD Output
Hi Everyone,
I'm creating a DVD (NTSC) (non broadcast) with 16:9 tracks and 4:3 tracks (not mixed within the same track). My higher priority is on the 16:9 material, and my audience will likely be watching on 16:9 TVs. Still, I don't want the 4:3 material to be stretched. Even designating the 4:3 tracks as such in DVDSP it still stretches on my set top player and household 16:9 TV, so I'm assuming that the best option would be to pillarbox the 4:3 stuff.
I already attempted to create a pillarbox in FCP 6, but the results were pretty bad. My source material is all interlaced video of different codecs, 10-bit uncompressed, ProRess HQ, and DV / DVCPRO. The worst of it was the DV / DVCPRO stuff -- the resolution was degraded, and the video stuttered in places.
The way I attempted to create a pillarbox was to take my 4:3 edited clips and put them into a sequence with the following specs:
1) For DV / DVDPRO footage: Target frame Size 864 x 486, Pixel Aspect Ratio NTSC - CCIR 601, Codec is DV / DVDPRO. My source footage is 720 x 480 NTSC DV, same Pixel Aspect Ratio. Frame rate is 29.97 for source and target. In the Motion tab (under distort) I changed the Aspect ratio to 12.5.
I then used Andy's Letterbox to create a pillarbox matte -- thank you Andy, if you are reading this!
Are my problems caused by the change in vertical resolution (by 6 pixels)? Anyone have any suggestions?
Thank you in advance.
I'm creating a DVD (NTSC) (non broadcast) with 16:9 tracks and 4:3 tracks (not mixed within the same track). My higher priority is on the 16:9 material, and my audience will likely be watching on 16:9 TVs. Still, I don't want the 4:3 material to be stretched. Even designating the 4:3 tracks as such in DVDSP it still stretches on my set top player and household 16:9 TV, so I'm assuming that the best option would be to pillarbox the 4:3 stuff.
I already attempted to create a pillarbox in FCP 6, but the results were pretty bad. My source material is all interlaced video of different codecs, 10-bit uncompressed, ProRess HQ, and DV / DVCPRO. The worst of it was the DV / DVCPRO stuff -- the resolution was degraded, and the video stuttered in places.
The way I attempted to create a pillarbox was to take my 4:3 edited clips and put them into a sequence with the following specs:
1) For DV / DVDPRO footage: Target frame Size 864 x 486, Pixel Aspect Ratio NTSC - CCIR 601, Codec is DV / DVDPRO. My source footage is 720 x 480 NTSC DV, same Pixel Aspect Ratio. Frame rate is 29.97 for source and target. In the Motion tab (under distort) I changed the Aspect ratio to 12.5.
I then used Andy's Letterbox to create a pillarbox matte -- thank you Andy, if you are reading this!
Are my problems caused by the change in vertical resolution (by 6 pixels)? Anyone have any suggestions?
Thank you in advance.
MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.3)
