help with still conversion to 16:9

[Steve Roffler]

Hi,

I shoot DV in native 16:9 with a PDX10 and haven't had any trouble getting it to wide-screen. I can also get stills to 16:9 by changing the pixel aspect ratio to 1.2121 in the media properties.

My question is: is there any way to automate this process? I currently have to change the media properties of each still which gets tedious for a couple hundred slides.

I tried scripting with "matchaspect" but it just crops to the correct size without changing the pixel apsect ratio from 1.00 to 1.2121. This is NOT what I want to do. I don't like to crop my pictures. I don't mind having black spaces on the sides. But I do mind having skinny people (well they may not mind).

Any help on how to automate this process or select all the slides to do this at one time would be greatly appreciated.

Steve

[James Connors]

If you're changing the PAR surely its going to stretch the image from its natural aspect into 16x9 ?

By changing the canvas size into the correct proportions will give you a better result surely?

[Jimmy McKenzie]

In Photoshop you will need to record a new action. If this incldes dropping in an overlay or adding a new layer to avoid cropping then that can be included.

If your source stills have the required pixel count, you can set your crop tool to give you the desired aspect ratio by defining the x and y parameters with pixel entries. This will not degrade your photo but the source photography will have to be done respecting the fact that they will be cropped to 16x9.

Once you have experimanted with the action, assign a hot key to it and open up 25 photos at a go. Your action will point to a new folder for the save as command and you will quickly fill the folder with the refined images.

[Steve Roffler]

James,

All I can say is that if I don't change the PAR to 1.2121, then the pictures look to skinny.


Jimmy,

All my photos have already been cropped to 4x6 or 6x4 for prints. I really don't want to recrop them if possible. I usually use an action in photoshop to reduce the resolution from 300 to 150 dpi but that's about it.

I really am happy to just change the PAR if possible, I just don't like to do it one by one.

Steve

[Rob Lohman]

Why not do the following (if possible);

1. start a new project with the size of the still pictures at 1.0 pixel aspect ratio

2. load the pictures

3. put them as you want them (how long they should last etc.)

4. render out to an uncompressed format at the 1.2121 pixel aspect ratio

5. open your normal project and load this file

That should get you going. The only problem is if you need to
mix and match stuff, however if those are large blocks you could
simply splice the resulting video in the second phase.

Hope that made some sense.

[Steve Roffler]

Rob,

I think your idea should work. The only downside is, as you mentioned, mixing and matching. I usually intersperse photos with video, but they do come in blocks. I can always but the blocks on a time-line, render once and then cut the blocks back out. I will give it a try and see how it goes.


I am a bit surprised that no one has written a script to just change the PAR to a given value. Am I the only one with this problem? I wish I knew how to write a script but I am absolutely clueless.

[Steve Roffler]

rob,

Doesn't work.

I rendered a few pictures at 16:9 widescreen. Moved them to a new timeline but although the media properties are listed correctly at 1.2121, the photos are still too skinny. They retained the original PAR.

Upon some thought, I should have known this wouldn't work. If I don't change the PAR of each photo before I render, the aspect ratio of the figures is incorrect (too skinny) even though the whole project is rendered to 16:9 widescreen. So adding this step doesn't accomplish anything.

Any other ideas?

[Steve Roffler]

anyone?

I have 450 picture to do and I really really don't want to do them one by one.

[Edward Troxel]

If you do what Rob said, it WILL work. You just need to right-click the video, choose Properties, and change the PAR to 1.21 AFTER adding it to the new project.

Also, PAR does not appear to be a scriptable setting.

[Steve Roffler]

No, it doesn't work.

I did exactly that during my test. The photos were super squeezed until I changed the PAR to 1.2121. Then they were just squeezed the same amount as the original pictures that had a PAR of 1.

I guess that I could further increase the PAR until they look right but it doesn't seem like the correct solution.

[Rob Lohman]

Send me one photo (as JPEG please!!) at the e-mail address below
and I will get my above list to work for you and let you know.

[Steve Roffler]

Rob,

A photo should be in your email.


I noticed another strange thing (at least to me). If I change the PAR of a photo to 1.2121 on the timeline, then I drop the photo on another timeline from the explorer, the new photo already has a PAR of 1.2121. That is, it seems that there is no way to have the same photo display different PAR values even if the they are on different timelines.

[Rob Lohman]

I had a family emergency this weekend and had a reinstall of my
main machine at the same time. I will look at your still shortly.

[Steve Roffler]

Well, I bit the bullet and changed the PAR manually on 400 photos.

Am I the only one working in 16:9 or am I doing something wrong? Cropping to 16:9 doesn't solve the problem of the squeezed images since the PAR must be 1.2121 in widescreen. Anyone else working in 16:9 in Vegas?

[Steve Roffler]

Well, I am an idiot.


I finally figured out that I don't have to convert the pixel aspect ratios of all my photos to 1.2121 for widescreen. A PAR of 1.0 comes out looking fine after rendering to MPEG-2. I was fooled by looking at the preview window which made all the photos look thin at a PAR of 1.0.

Now I understand why no one else has this problem. There is no problem.

Live and learn.