Avid Pan & Scan?

[Brandon Rice]

Here's the deal, I am shooting a project with the HVX, 16:9 720Pn. This is a children's show, most likely destined for SD TV. I would like to get a 4:3 pan and scan from the 16:9 image. How would I do that efficiantly? :dankk2:

 

[krestofre]

There actually is a Pan & Scan effect in the Effects Pallet. You could play with that. I don't have a lot of experience with it though.

Assuming you shot for 4:3 (which just feels weird saying) then you could resize the frame with the resize effect. Switch your monitors in Avid to 4:3 then resize vertically down to 75. That should give you the proper aspect ratio, then you can scale the image to remove black bars.

It's arguable that you'll get better results doing this in After Effects or another FX / Compositing program because their resize quality can be better than Avid's internal effects.

I hope that helps.

 

[MichaelP]

Did you protect for 4:3 during the shoot so it is only a center cut that you need, or will you actually need to selectively choose a 4:3 extraction from anywhere in the 16:9 frame?

If so, go to the Reformat section of the effects palette and drop the pan & scan effect on the top track. Go to effects mode and select source 16:9 and target 4:3. Then go to actions and do a subdivide. Based on active tracks, it will automatically "add edits" to the pan and scan effect reducing the number of key frames you need to do. Then all you need to do is go from clip to clip, grab the 4:3 frame in the image and move it to where you want it to be.

Michael