FCP 5 Question - I'm going to combine mini dv footage shot 16:9 on a Sony PDX 10 and 4:3 footage on a Sony TRV-900. Do I download video as two separate projects or one?

Since I'm dealing with two different formats, how do I set my project preferences, since I have anamorphic and regular 4:3 dv video being used?

Thanks

You can have 16:9 and 4:3 sequences and clips in the same project with no problem. You only need to check the anamorphic box in either the browser, sequence settings or clip properties. It makes no difference how you capture the video. You can always check or uncheck the anamorphic property later.

However, you can't have both in the same sequence, which should be obvious (you can only watch on one TV at a time :-) So you need to define what you expect. Do you want a 4:3 sequence that also contains some letterboxed 16:9 clips? That's easy, just create a 4:3 sequence and drop everything into it. The 16:9 clips will automatically be letterboxed (they will require rendering though).

Or do you want a 16:9 anamorphic sequence with 4:3 clips? Same thing here, create the 16:9 project and when you drop in a 4:3 clip it will be pillarboxed with a black bar to the right and left.

Or do you want some 16:9 and some 4:3 sequences to be used separately? That's fine too. What final result are you expecting from this project?

I'm making a 16:9 video combining and using 4:3 clips throughout. In my project preferences I set up for anamorphic NTSC video. I put a 16:9 clip into the timeline and it looks fine (as expected).

I put a 4:3 video clip in and it looks squashed. I get black bars on top and bottom, no pillars on the side.

I was planning to do image scaling on the 4:3 video clip, once I pull it into my timeline.

Can you help?

Thanks

1. Check sequence setting to be sure it's 16:9 anamorphic
2. Check clip settings of real 16:9 clips to be sure they are anamorphic
3. Check clip settings of 4:3 material to be sure they are not anamorphic.

If all this checks out but your 4:3 clips are still distorted in the timeline then do the following:

1. double click on the clip in the timeline so it opens in the viewer
2. click on the motion tab in the viewer
3. click the triangle next to the Distort property
4. Note the setting under "Aspect Ratio"
5. Change this value to 33.33 and the 4:3 clip should be properly pillarboxed

Caveat: I'm using FCP 4.5, maybe something's different in 5? I doubt it, but I just don't know for sure...

Thanks! Your info was very helpful.

Daniel Iwata

Glad I could help!

I am importing HDV 16:9 clips captured from an XL-H1 into a NTSC DV Simple Setup project (FCP 5+). The scale (for the 16:9 clips) shows as 50 and the Aspect Ratio as -50. If I change the scale to 100 and the Aspect Ratio to 0 I get a 3:4 image (croppped).

Is this the best way to reformat 16:9 in a 3:4 project? I tried creating a second sequence with the 16:9 clips and exporting but the resulting QT file was still 16:9.

Seems like I may be missing something here???

Is this the best way to reformat 16:9 in a 3:4 project? Seems like I may be missing something here???

no mate, i donlt think so. people have been making quite a meal out of this recently and its yet really not that difficult. couple of links below to help get your head aroubd whats going on ...

check out this video tutorial http://www.proapptips.com/proapptipsvideotutorials/879F6B61-CFF9-4FD1-8D43-FDF89605611A/6ECEC931-47F1-4BC1-8CD4-41FE4842B45D.html
and this written one http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/faking_it.html

Andy:

Great pointers at both URLs. Many, many thanks!

Boyd,
Your info really helped as I just experimented shooting a project
in true 16x9 using a switchable Canon lens and changing the ascpect
ration on my Ike 7A.

However I had a problem.

I had to use some 4x3 file video to cover some 16 x 9 sound-bites. Distorting the 4x3 to -33.33 left some of the underlying true 16x9 visible on the top and bottom of the frame.
Thru trial and error I set upon -22 distort on the 4x3 to match the true 16x9 screen area.

Do I have a setting wrong?
thanks

You'll be fine with what you did ... no one is going to spot the difference
In point of fact though, you should not have distorted your 4:3 footage unless you really wanted a "distorted" look.
FCP will automatically apply whatever aspect ratio is required to ensure your source footage displays in its correct aspect within the target sequence.
All you need to then do, when combining these footages of different aspect ratio's in your sequence, is to "scale" the footage to fill the canvas and then reframe as appropriate for the content.

Thanks for the info Andy.