Another newbie question

P

PopCultureFanboy

Active member
Okay, so I am stringing together an acting reel for someone. Two clips are 960x540 and one is 640x480. All are H.264. Does anyone know how to work with these three clips in the same timeline and then what settings to export as to get their full resolution? It seems like when I adjust the sequence settings to 960x540 that the 640 footage really suffers and vice versa, though none ever really seem like they are their full resolution. Any ideas?
 
Reshoot the footage? Not even kidding.


But really, here is your problem- the two pieces of footage are different aspect ratios. 960x540 is 16:9 and 640x480 is 4:3. They aren't the same shape.
If you resize the 960x540 footage to 640x480, you will have black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

If you do the opposite and resize the 640x480 up to 960x540, the footage will look wide and pixelated.

I would reshoot.
If you cannot reshoot, then I would pick 640x480 for your end delivery size. I would not resize the 960x540 footage down all the way. I would just slightly reduce it in size, maybe to 60%-75%, so that the edges of the frame are clipped off but the actor is still properly framed.

In FCP, this is done by opening the footage in the viewer, selecting the motion tab, and using the scale attribute.
 
Thanks Renee, you're awesome. unfortunately reshooting isn't an option as I didn't even shoot any of this to begin with, its just a demo reel for an actress. I figured I should just convert the 960x540 footage. But my question is will the resolution be affected in doing this? What should my final delivery be?
 
Definitely 640x480. Just resize your sequence in FCP to be 640x480, and drop in your 960x540 footage. Double click the footage to see it in your viewer. Then go to the motion tab, and scale the footage to fit properly in the frame. This size will be dependent upon whatever it is that happens in the footage. My guess would be 65% or so. Also check that the distort attribute is set to 0.
 
Quality

Quality

thanks. For whatever reason though, every time I try and export, as H.264, it drops the quality of just about every file. I've done it out of compressor and when I set the export in FCP to "Current settings" it shows the settings as much, much lower. Any thoughts on how I can get the final delivery to ahem, not look like complete crap?
 
Check Top Menu - Sequence - Sequence Settings to make sure your sequence is the right size and format, just to be sure.
When I am finished with an edit, I select file -> export -> quicktime movie. (not quicktime conversion.)

This should just export your sequence as it is in the sequence settings. This I consider my 'master' copy.

I keep my master copies encoded in Prores, because it's a native format for FCP and works faster for editing, effects, and is lossless. H264 is not recommended for editing inside FCP- I would transcode it to prores first.

After that, I use compressor / adobe media encoder to create my web quality version from my master copy. If you are unsure as to the preset in compressor, I would suggest starting out with the "youtube" setting.
 
Yeah i bit the bullet and used Compressor last night. I didn't want to because of how slow it was but I didn't realize I wasn't utilizing all my cores. My very absolute last question (and thanks for all the help!) is that when i export, regardless of what my sequence settings are, the two widescreen clips are a bit smaller in the center of the screen, whereas in the sequence in FCP, they are fit and are not (though they have the black bars obviously). Is there a way to make them full screen? Easy fix?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top