3:1 aspect ratio

[Sirius_Doggy]

OK, here's a tough one. Hopefully someone has had to do this before. I have a client that has given me some footage that they have shot. It's all 4:3 stuff. They are doing a convention next week and want some of the clips edited to show on a screen using the Montage system. Basically it's a computerized switcher that takes a source and splits it into three outputs so the image can be projected with three seperate projectors across an extremely wide screen. The screen they are using is 60' x 20' hince the 3:1 aspect ratio I need. I talked to the Montage guy and he said to just set my NLE to output 3:1 and that's all I needed to do but I feel there is more to it than that. They want it on MiniDV so it's gonna be output 4:3 but I guess I just need to crop it down to a 3:1 letterbox in the video??? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Here's an article that show the setup a bit. Not too much detail though...

If you look at the photo below you can see a show I did several months ago where the Montage was used. I had nothing to do with the video editing though.
The center screen on this show was 66' x 20' with normal 4:3 20'x15's on the outside and 16' x 12' for the delay screens closest to the camera.

 

[egproductions]

I have never delt or even heard of this switcher however i do know that dv can only support 720 by 480 wether that is .9 PAR or 1.2 PAR so its either 4:3 or 16:9 on dv if you want something at a 3:1 Aspect Ration then you will need to letterbox it unless you want your footage squished. now the only problem with doing this is that in order for the footage to not have a black bar on top and bottom would be to scale it up and of couse that would loose resolution but i think that the only option and i am assuming that is what your client wants. Just to be safe i would export a few diffrent methods just incase the client isnt happy with one of them.

 

[Sirius_Doggy]

Thanks for the reply eq.
I did get some more info from both the client and the Montage guy.
First - the footage they gave me is going to be used as a background with graphics overlayed over it. Because of that, they are not too worried about it being a bit blurry. That was my first bit of relief.
Second - The Montage guy gave me a suggestion for how to crop the footage. He's not familiar with Premeire but basically this is what he told me to do. Drop the 4:3 footage into a 4:3 timeline. Mask off a 3:1 area with black bars. Then adjust my clip up or down cropping the top or bottom of the 4:3 footage as needed. Once that's done, render out the movie as an avi. Then bring that avi back into another timeline and stretch it out top to bottom to lose the black bars. Now the footage will be severely stretched top to bottom but when they play the 4:3 tape back and squeeze it to 3:1 it will once again look normal. Loosing a lot of resolution of course but I don't think it will really matter since they are going to blur it and put graphics over it.
If I get a chance I'll post photos of the process later and once we get into the show I'll post photos of the final results.

Thanks again.

 

[soarprod]

that should do it. - you could also just stretch the image top and bottom and not render out the one with black bars.