Aspect Ratio

[Apothocary]

Hi there, i work on FCP HD and i was wondering how to do something..............

Currently i just crop my picture to give it that, sleaker and more defined 'look', however i want it to have the REAL effect.

So my question is, how in FCP HD can i get a 2:35:1 aspect ratio???


Thanks in advance....

Apoth

 

[mmm]

I would shoot real "stretched" 16:9, if you can on your camera, and then crop. The DVX requires the anamorphic adapter to shoot true 16:9 without loosing resolution.

As far as I know, there isn't a better way when using video. If you are just outputting to DVD, you don't really loose any resolution, merely cover over it in black. Make sure you set the DVD as 16:9 anamorphic so that any DVD players know to squash the picture back to the correct ratio.

If you want exactly 2.35:1, remember that you black bars at the top and bottom will be stretched by 33.33%, like the rest of the picture, so they need to be 33.33% "thicker."

 

[wahrez]

I've shot my film 4:3 but I put clear tape over the monitor to mask for 2.35:1, the footage was then imported into FCP as 4:3 and I used the Video Filter to add the black bars, if I'm outputing the film to DVD should i output it 4:3 with the black bars or should I crop the 4:3 (720x540) to 2.35:1 (720x306)?

 

[mmm]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think that you can "crop" the output to DVD. You can add black bars, which is your only option to obtain 2.35:1.

As I said above, it helps to shoot in 16:9, but as you shot in 4:3, you may want to stretch the picture in post to make it anamorphic. This means that the DVD may have better compatibilty with some TVs - widescreens without a zoom mode. If you output a 4:3 image with black bars making it 2.35, some widescreen TV may leave you with a small, centered image with black on all 4 sides! However you will loose some quality by stretching the image.