widescreen problems in FCP 7

[Joe Batt]

Hey guys, Having trouble. I'm trying to apply the widescreen to my footage. I'm going from 6.66:1 to 2.35:1 the problem is that if I apply widescreen to footage at 100% scale, all is fine. If I increse the scale it applies the the footage that has been cropped out. I tried to apply the widescreen first then change scale AND the other way around. I dont want to export the whole movie and then have to go back and cut the whole thing up just to do this one thing. Is there any way to make this work? I cant just drop it onto a full finished movie because I have to adjust the offset on each clip. Any advice is appreciated.

[R Geoff Baker]

Apologies if I misunderstand what you are trying to do, but if I follow correctly:

You are applying a widescreen mask to your video -- you found this under Video Filters>Matte>Widescreen. I'm guessing this is what you mean by 'I apply widescreen to footage' ...

If this is what you are doing, it is almost surely not what you want -- all this is doing is putting a prebuilt black mask on the top and bottom of your video -- it isn't 'converting' or 'changing' it to widescreen. You will now have 4:3 video masked top and bottom to deliver a 16:9 image in a 4:3 file ...

As you mention, the mask gets moved when you scale the clip.

I think what you really want to do is start with a sequence setting that is 16:9 -- you will have to tell FCP this, as it prefers to match your sequence setting to your source material. Now when you place a 4:3 clip on the timeline, you use the scale instruction to choose how the widescreen view is applied to the material -- do you pillarbox, do you scale up and crop (by simply leaving it outside the canvas area) top and bottom, do you crop more from the top or bottom, et cetera.

HTH
GB

[Pete Cofrancesco]

You create a widescreen sequence and drag the clip into it. If it wasn't filmed widescreen to begin with changing it this way will distort/stretch the image. Note widescreen is often referred to as Anamorphic.

[R Geoff Baker]

"If it wasn't filmed widescreen to begin with changing it this way will distort/stretch the image."

Well, maybe there is a preference to prevent distort/stretch -- on my system, it does neither. It starts by placing in a pillarbox, and it is easy enough to to resize the clip so that is off canvas 'cropped' top and bottom. At no time do I get distortion or stretch.

Cheers,
GB

[Daniel Epstein]

There is a distort setting under the motion tab if you highlight a clip which might be what Pete is thinking of. Sometimes you use it to deal with widescreen issues. FCP tends use it when you put a clip of a different size than the sequence you are using.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

If you don't want to lose any of the image you would have to stretch it.

Convert 4x3 Video to 16x9 Widescreen

But when its filmed widescreen its not distorted. I can't explain the mechanics of it.

[Joe Batt]

Thanks Guys, I didn't think to make the. Changes in sequence settings. I'm going to let you know what happens. Im going to create a new sequence and try to paste my timeline into it, we'll see how it goes.

[R Geoff Baker]

Originally Posted by Pete Cofrancesco

Note widescreen is often referred to as Anamorphic.

Anamorphic has a very specific meaning, and doesn't universally apply to widescreen.

Standard definition video is always 720x480 in NTSC, but actually displays as 640x480. So the pixels are not square -- they are slightly taller than they are wide, to make 720 fit into a 640 display. If, on the other hand, the pixels are described as much wider than they are tall ... you create an anamorphic view, and you get a widescreen result. This is typically used on a widescreen release of a DVD -- the image is encoded as 720x480, as it must be, but if viewed in a 640x480 screen (a traditional standard definition screen) you will see a 'squished' view where everyone is tall and skinny. The proper view for a 720x480 anamorphic widescreen is on a 16:9 screen -- an HD TV -- where the pixels are spread wider so the resulting display fills a widescreen and everyone looks 'correct' or perhaps there are black letterbox bars added top and bottom to a traditional 4:3 standard definition display; again, everyone looks correct.

When you are working with SD material, such as DV filmed material, you will encounter the anamorphic flag to make the display corrections cited above. You don't see the anamorphic flag in HD material, as the pixels are always square, and the display is always 16:9

Clear as mud?

Cheers,
GB

[Shaun Roemich]

Originally Posted by R Geoff Baker

You don't see the anamorphic flag in HD material, as the pixels are always square, and the display is always 16:9

Not ENTIRELY true...

1440x1080 material (HDV and several MPEG variants) IS anamorphic as it "unpacks" to 1920x1080.

DVCProHD also uses non square pixels in both the 1080 and 720 "flavours" of HD.

Yes, HD is always 16:9 so the material should always display at 16:9.

[R Geoff Baker]

Thanks for the reminder Shaun -- you're quite correct, there are some HD acquisition formats that are anamorphic. I think though that all the delivery methods of HD are square pixel, which is my humble excuse for getting this wrong.

Cheers,
GB

[Pete Cofrancesco]

I was alerting the OP that in FCP sequence settings he won't find "Widescreen" instead its called Anamorphic. Rightly or wrongly, these two terms often are considered synonymous.

[Shaun Roemich]

They aren't synonymous but one could argue that all standard definition video that isn't optimized for Web viewing is anamorphic.

Ie. DV video at 16:9 is anamorphic with a resolution of 720x480 and a PAR of 1.2. But I can encode files for the Web at a PAR of 1 with a resolution of 853x480 which is 16:9 widescreen but NOT anamorphic.

[R Geoff Baker]

Originally Posted by Pete Cofrancesco

I was alerting the OP that in FCP sequence settings he won't find "Widescreen" instead its called Anamorphic. Rightly or wrongly, these two terms often are considered synonymous.

But 'anamorphic' would be the wrong setting to use -- anamorphic is for those that are using _source_ material that is anamorphic, not for those that have ordinary source and want to produce a widescreen result. That's my point.

Cheers,
GB

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Oh I see, I always shoot widescreen now a days so I'm not as familiar with 4:3 conversion.

[R Geoff Baker]

"I always shoot widescreen now a days so I'm not as familiar with 4:3 conversion."

Quite so, as many of us do now -- so you would avoid 'anamorphic' unless you shot an HDV format which is a sort of 'junior anamorphic' -- all the AVCHD formats use square pixels and so are not anamorphic at all.

Cheers,
GB