I'm editing some holiday footage that was taken on a humble Canon Ixus. I've made a one minute 'teaser trailer' and compressed it to an H.264 Quicktime file but the compressed file is stretched slightly vertically, in fact it plays completely square.

In the FCP browser it wasn't widescreen (which I wouldn't expect it to be) and I had put my east setup to PAL (format) using DVD-Anamorphic, which worked fine for some other Quicktime files that had been imported from an old DV Camcorder and stored for a few months before editing.

Have I used the wrong setup functions and if so, is there any way I can rectify it without doing the whole thing again or losing to much quality?

Thanks in adv,

CP

Hi CP,

Most computer media player apps do not properly recognize anamorphic video, and playback assumes square pixels, thus the distortion. When exporting, you need to compensate and export using a 1.0 Pixel Aspect Ratio - in other words, square pixels.

For widescreen PAL, try 1024x576 (though I have also see 1050x576 listed). For NTSC readers, 720x480 widescreen would be 864x480 with 1.0 PAR.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

If you're making a DVD, then the width of your encoded video should always be 720, regardless of the standard or format. You will need to flag the video as 16x9 when you author the DVD. In DVD Studio Pro, this is done by selecting the track you put it in & making sure that it's correctly set in the inspector.

Not making a DVD but I did try a different compression and although there are black bars on either side of the screen, it is at least un stretched.