Best way to present 1.55:1 aspect ratio on DVD?

Hi Marc

Personally I think I'd do it as a 4:3 letterbox and be done with it...

Or ask for a new master that's framed properly!!!

Steve

Oh, silly European aspect ratios....

I hated that! Especially when they did it to all of Kubrick's films when he specifically asked them not to!

Whether people want Anamorphic or not I still think that if the master is 4:3 that whatever you do is a compromise. If it's a 4:3 (1:33:1??) master at 1.55:1 that means if you do it 4:3 then they are getting the full resolution but if you slap it into a 16:9 pillarbox aren't they effectively getting less resolution???

Steve

Think of it this way... If you set it in a 16:9 pillarbox and people view it on a 4:3 set forced to letterbox then they are definitely getting less resolution... aren't they?

Steve is correct....this should be encoded 4x3...no ands, ifs, or buts...:)

I don't know why you're getting all this advice to release anything - that's not actually 4:3 or 1.37:1 (aka Academy Ratio) - without anamorphic enhancement in 2007. Maybe it's the lack of a real DVDSP update that's made us all lazy. 😉

Personally, I would try not to scale your 4:3 master in an anamorphic timeline in FCP. Instead, make use of Compressor 2 (or later) and Frame Controls to do the upscaling whenever possible.

I had to do what you're asking once, but for a 1.66:1 project. Based on that, here's what I'd recommend:

1. Create a new 4:3 sequence
   
2. (Optional) Alter the background of your Canvas to either of the Checkboard patterns
   
3. On V1, drop in a Color Matte and adjust it's color to strongly contrast with your footage
   
4. On your Color Matter, drop in a Widescreen Matte and adjust it to 1.78:1
   
5. Place your 4:3 master on V2 and scale it down until it fits within the frame created by the Color Matte on V1. I'm guessing about 85% or so?
   
6. Disable V1
   
7. Instead of rendering and exporting a QT movie, to maintain the highest quality, I'd suggest marking off a key portion (perhaps no longer than 2 minutes), then File > Export > Using Compressor
   
8. In Compressor, adjust the settings how you like, but be sure to:
   1. Alter the movie to 16:9 (duh!)
   2. Turn Frame Control to Custom and set both Resize and Deinterlace to Better (not Best) and adjust the Anti-Alias and Details settings to, say, 3 and 9, respectively.
   3. In the Geometry pane, adjust top and bottom crop values by 60. If your default is 2 and 4, make it 62 and 64. If it's 0 and 0, make it 60 and 60, etc
9. Submit your encode. It will take a while (even for 2 minutes, in most cases)
   
10. Evaluate your encode for the correct cropping (you might have to go back to FCP and adjust the scale values and/or centering) and whether you need to adjust the Anti-Alias and Details values in Compressor. Or, quite honestly, you might not think this is worth it. However, if this is a disc meant for replication, it usually is.

Personally, it takes me a few passes to get things right (Anti-Alias and Details being the hardest to pin down) but it's always worth it...

Let us know how it goes.

Which ones... I don't ever recall seeing a release like that.

Despite what Hanumang is saying I agree with Eric. It's a 4:3 master which has a very slight black top and bottom yes? So why would you then capture that and crop it or pillarbox it. I can't see how it makes any sense...

I have just drawn a 4:3 ratio frame in Illustrator then drawn a 1.55:1 frame and then resized to fit within the 4:3 frame and it apears to me that the black bars are very slight... so when shown on a 4:3 set much of this will disappear in the overscan. It is then full resolution from the master provided. If people with 16:9 choose they can then watch it pillarboxed themselves, use the various zoom functions or (as most people do when they watch 4:3 material) watch it wrongly stretched!!!!

I still say if you if you place it in a 16:9 setting you are effectively reducing it's resolution... though by doing the same exercise in Illustrator and drawing a 16:9 frame and resizing the 1.55:1 to fit the bars at the side aren't that pronounced so again much of it may be lost to some degree in overscan...

I think the only way is to test it both ways by using a small sequence as hanumang suggests and see which is preferable...

Steve

Which ones... I don't ever recall seeing a release like that.

The first instance that springs to mind (because it's part of my personal collection) is 1999's Tarzan from Disney - it's 1.66:1, but pillarboxed into an anamorphic 1.78:1 frame for DVD, at least for the Collector's Edition DVD here in Region 1.

Cinema Paradiso is too, I believe, but I don't have it in front of me to confirm.

And, just to be clear, I'm not talking about discs that shrink the frame to account for overscan, like recent Criterion releases do.

Marc

If you must do this kind of work just make sure the client knows. Bottom line is that your going to take a resolution hit. It may not be severe and hanumang's workflow is great. Believe it or not a large majority of sets in this world are still 4x3.

I think you'll find Marc is the client!!!!