EditPhish
01-31-2006, 12:27 PM
If you've followed my posts you know I've been researching and researching and researching and researching and researching and researching (you get the idea) for a way to take a letterbox movie, crop out the black bars and resize it appropriate for 16:9 anamorphic.
Apparently, some programs will do this for you when you go to create the mpeg-2 (like Compressor). None of the software I have gives me that option, and every method I've tried in Final Cut Express, After Effects & Plugins have all yielded pretty poor results (too much quality loss).
I considered the Photozoom route... but the time it would take seemed excessive... not to mention a little clumbsy (though admittedly, examples i've seen at least online look great).
SO... I kept searching and finally found a program (FREE!) called MPEG Streamclip (for Mac). A standalone app, it very easily lets crop and scale your movie on export. Supposedly it uses advanced resizing algorithms for the least amount of quality loss in scaling.
It's got a lot of other features too... including the ability to mux and demux.
(oops! edit) Here's the link...
http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html
I've run some initial test and the results look pretty good. I'm burning a DVD now with the original and resized version, so I'll let ya know my findings.
Apparently, some programs will do this for you when you go to create the mpeg-2 (like Compressor). None of the software I have gives me that option, and every method I've tried in Final Cut Express, After Effects & Plugins have all yielded pretty poor results (too much quality loss).
I considered the Photozoom route... but the time it would take seemed excessive... not to mention a little clumbsy (though admittedly, examples i've seen at least online look great).
SO... I kept searching and finally found a program (FREE!) called MPEG Streamclip (for Mac). A standalone app, it very easily lets crop and scale your movie on export. Supposedly it uses advanced resizing algorithms for the least amount of quality loss in scaling.
It's got a lot of other features too... including the ability to mux and demux.
(oops! edit) Here's the link...
http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html
I've run some initial test and the results look pretty good. I'm burning a DVD now with the original and resized version, so I'll let ya know my findings.