Help..! HDV timeline out to a pal 4:3 CRT monitor squashed image long and thin?

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Drcoffee

Well-known member
Outputting from final cut hdv timeline, via either a dv camera on firewire loop, or blackmagic intensity pro component cable, to an SD PAL broadcast monitor (without 16:9) the images is squished long and thin, to an almost cinematic aspect ratio?

Please help....?! PAL timelines look fine, when PAL 16:9 footage timeline is set to anamorphic
 
I think you will need to create a new timeline and letterbox your HD footage in a 4:3 aspect ratio to display correctly on that monitor. just take your original sequence and nest it into a new timeline with 4:3 settings. You most likely will have to render the timeline.
 
This is what the HDV timeline out of final cut to PAL SD monitor via black magic component looks like. Flattened....?
hdv_out.jpg


These are the settings:
HDV_settings.gif
 
the whole idea is that the monitor broadcast monitor is used for realtime downconvert, is this not possible in correct aspect ratio from a HDV timeline?
 
looks like its doing "overscan"

my JVC does the same thing when i hit "overscan"

disengaged it fills the screen with slight bars on top and bottom
(in 16x9 mode)

shawn
 
I Don't use Black Magic so I can't give any info on that one. But since your monitor doesn't natively support 16:9, it going to appear squished. In order for it to appear properly something needs to downconvert the signal to PAL SD 4:3. If FCP is outputting the signal at it's native HDV 16:9 settings, it's expecting the hardware it's feeding to know what to do with that signal.

Looking at the Audio/video settings panel for FCP6 I only have control to output NTSC signals. I'm not sure if this would be different if we had any HD or HDV firewire equipment. I don't, so if i tried to output anything higher then SD NTSC it wouldn't even play in the fist place. I'll get screenshots but thats about it. When reviewing anything HD i have to downconvert it in FCP or find a HDMI HD monitor.

The problem is that the NTSC Monitor isn't getting the signal settings it's expecting. It doesnt' know what HDV is. So it doesnt' know that it needs to properly scale the image and provide the correct letterbox effect.

Therefore you must convert the signal either from the camera you said you are looping through, or from FCP before the signal goes out the door. Maybe that's what your Black Magic component needs to do as well if it can be set to downconvert an output signal to SD.

Some camera settings will allow you to change the output signal to SD. But if that won't work, then you could create a PAL SD timeline and paste or nest your HDV sequence into that timeline. Make sure the new timeline does not self adjust to the HDV settings. The footage will need to scale down to fit the PAL SD timeline. You will have to render the PAL timeline to downconvert the HDV. If done correctly the footage should now appear properly letterboxed for your monitor.


Nesting the HDV timeilne will work great for review on an NTSC. However you will find that every time you edit or change something in your HDV timeline you will have to re-render the PAL SD timeline.
 
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