adjusting widescreen filter in fcp.... question

Jay Rodriguez

Jay Rodriguez

Coffee Member
So I added the wide screen filter and found where you can adjust the amount of black bar that the viewer will see but, how can I fine tune the amount beyong the few selections that fcp lets you choose?

I'd like to have it sit in between 1.85:1 & 2.35:1.

Is this possible?
 
Yep, its possible to more finely tune your widescreen settings. It's not much, but you can adjust the border setting to crop a little more then your pre-set ratio.
 
Coffey,

I never use FCP's widescreen filters for a variety of reason mostly dealing with loss of resolution. Brian C. Weed, who was a gaffer on our movie, posted the following method to apply a widescreen mask, which is what I have used since and have been very happy with (since you are, in effect, creating your own size mask, the possibilities are infinite):

"Joseph got a good tip from the FCP user's group to manually apply a widescreen matte, so I recommend it to anyone with a native 4:3 image you want to crop to 16:9. It goes like this:

"On a new video track, lay down a black Matte: Color from the video generators. Make it the entire length of your sequence. Then apply
this filter:

Video FIlters / Matte / Mask Shape

In the controls for the Mask Shape, leave the Horiz. at 100, but change the Vert. setting. The guy on lafcpug.com told me to set it at 75.2. While futzing with it and comparing it to the built-in Widescreen Matte, I found that 74.9 was more exact. (What's obviously nice about this method is if you change your mind, this is now one setting instead of hundreds.) Then make sure to check the Invert check-box. Ta-da! A custom widescreen matte with sharp edges."

It's gonna take a lot longer to render, but in the end it's well worth it for the look of your picture."
 
oh man thats awesome blaine!

EDIT: oh wait, lol... i tried dragging the mask onto an empty timeline track and it won't let me... how do I set one in?



Also, does the widescreen filter in fcp really eat some of the pictures rez?
 
Okay Coffey,

You have to do this in 2 major steps...

Step one, with the video generator, create a matte>color and make sure that the color is black ( in the control tab)

Step two, now to that add the the filter from matte>mask shape in the filters tab on the clip you just generated. Now, under the filter tab, set the horizontal to 100 and adjust the vertical to whatever suits your project. Be sure to click the invert box!!!!

Now, drag this onto a new line above everything else. (you may have to lock all the others to drag the length to cover the whole time line.) And yes, it will take a while to render. This could be the last step before fine tuning...

I just tried it all out so that I was sure it would work.

Blaine
 
For what it's worth, I just tried it myself and found "80" on the vertical scale to be the right match for the DVX100B's 16x9 setting.

-j
 
I shot it with the DVX's 16x9 but needed a little extra blk bar in there but couldn't get exactly what I needed from FCP which is why I started the thread.

Thanks though. :)
 
Blaine said:
Coffey,

I never use FCP's widescreen filters for a variety of reason mostly dealing with loss of resolution.
Click to expand...

A widescreen filter and a matte filter will cause the same image quality loss (actually, there won't be any in the final output).
 
Is 74.9/75.2 really accurate for 16x9? I've noticed that those numbers don't match the size of the bars generated by the 100B when using the letterbox function. (Somewhere closer to 79/80).

Does the 100b's letterbox function not to 16x9? (1:85 perhaps instead?)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top