i am outputting a short film for a tv station. Having followed the aspect ratio spec of 4:3 by my client, the finished compression appears square (old fashioned tv shape) and squashed.

they say they want it modern tv shape....any thoughts on how i can achieve this?


Quicktime Movie Conversion

Video:
Compression Type: MPEG IMX 625/50 (50Mb/s)
Frame Rate: 25fps
Dimensions: PAL 720x576 4:3

Sounds like you want to "pillar box" it. Take the 4:3 footage and put it on a 16:9 timeline, keep the aspect ratio and export. It should put a black bar on left and right side of the video. If you didn't want the black bars, you could put some kind of graphics or logos on either side of the video on the timeline. ESPN does that with their 4:3 footage. They have darker station logos instead of just black bars.

To complement David's info, you can put down the video in the 16:9 project and let it stretch to fill the screen, and apply a BLUR effect to it, then put the 4:3 video over it. That way, the bars on the sides match the colors of the video content, I see this a lot on PBS, news, etc.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

Cool idea Jeff. I hadn't thought of that and I'm not sure if I've seen that before.

Thank you Jeff, that is a cool idea and I just used it.

Cheers.

Cameron I know how to fix this in Final Cut Pro 7 if you are editing with this software.

Make sure you editing 16:9 aspect ratio. If you are simply Print To Video from here if you want it on tape. Otherwise, export the file and open it with Quicktime 7 Pro. The display aspect ration will be 4:3 but the pixel aspect ratio will be 16:9. To fix this, in Quicktime, click on Window > Show Movie Properties, then click Video Track and under the Visual Settings tab tick off Preserve Aspect Ratio and make the width 1024. Keep the height 576. Save.

Now you will have the proper frame size and you can burn it to DVD from here.