anamorphic 16:9

[Amos Kim]

thanks guys. I need to download the new QT. And Jeff, I"m shooting on DV for now... I"ll try removing the anamorphic setting and going 16:9. I always thought anamorphic was 16:9... what's the difference?

[Amos Kim]

wait, FCP 4.5 groups 16:9 and anamorphic as the same thing... I'm confused.

[Boyd Ostroff]

For DV, anamorphic and 16:9 are the same thing. All DV is 720x480 (NTSC) pixels. The only difference for 16:9 is that the pixels are displayed wider. Anamorphic roughly translated from Greek means "changed form."

So on FCP 4.5 (or the newer versions) the only way to identify your footage as 16:9 is to click the "anamorphic" checkbox in the clip and sequence properties. That tells FCP to stretch the image wider while you edit, and it embeds a signal in the video stream which some devices (monitors, decks and some software) can recognize and cause them to go into 16:9 mode.

[Amos Kim]

so, outside of dv, what is the difference between anamorphic and 16:9? Sometimes I hear 2.35:1 referred to as anamorphic.

[Jeff Sayre]

Here are two links that may help:

http://gregl.net/videophile/anamorphic.htm

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage...ding_16_9.html

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Amos Kim

Sometimes I hear 2.35:1 referred to as anamorphic.

Yes - see my definition of anamorphic above. It describes a process where you fit a rectangular peg in a square hole :-) During the 1950's when everyone was excited about widescreen movies someone came up with the idea of using a special lens to squash everything in the horizontal dimension and record it on film. Then in the theatre another lens was used on the projector to stretch the film image to the full width of the screen.

With DV the same thing is being done digitally by dividing/multiplying the horizontal position of the pixels. So anamorphic could apply to any process that accomplishes the same thing.