Converting 16:9 to 4:3

[_JD_]

I'm shooting two commercials on my HMC150 which records to 16:9. Comcast is requiring that the commercials be submitted in 720x480.

I would like the screen to be filled with no letterbox look. Is there some way within FCP to "punch" a 4:3 version of the 16:9 output from the HMC so that there is no distortion of the picture?

TIA.

 

[Moseph]

If you drop 16x9 footage into a 4x3 timeline, there shouldn't be any sort of squeeze going on. All you'll need to do is adjust the scale, and possibly the center point if you don't have some sort of guide on your LCD for framing.

 

[NoahK]

Your basic pan and scan....

Noah

 

[AndrewGentle]

Comcast is requiring that the commercials be submitted in 720x480.

Are you sure they don't want it still in the 16:9 aspect ratio stretched into the frame the way 16:9 recording works on MiniDV? 720 x 480 isn't 4:3 on its own anyway, assuming a square pixel aspect ratio it comes out to 3:2 (1.5:1). Both a 16:9 and a 4:3 image need to be stretched in a certain way to fill the 720 x 480 standard.

 

[_JD_]

Are you sure they don't want it still in the 16:9 aspect ratio stretched into the frame the way 16:9 recording works on MiniDV? 720 x 480 isn't 4:3 on its own anyway, assuming a square pixel aspect ratio it comes out to 3:2 (1.5:1). Both a 16:9 and a 4:3 image need to be stretched in a certain way to fill the 720 x 480 standard.

The specifications (thanks for the responses BTW):


< File Compression Guideline >

QuickTime or MPG2 (transport) are the preferred formats
DV/NTSC or ProRes compression works well for SD television
720x480 Resolution 29.97 frame rate
Mpg1 Layer 2 Audio, 48KHz, at 192 Kbps, 16bits


​

 

[_JD_]

Now I find this online on the HMC150:

"AVCHD recording supports 1080i/24/50/60, as well as 720p/24/50/60. Plus, the new format supports 16:9 and 4:3 SD raster sizes of 720x480 at 60i (NTSC) and 720x576 at 50i (PAL)."

edit: but it seems that the 720x480 output is only available in video out from the camera via HDMI.

 

[_JD_]

For other newbs that may find this thread:

To convert 1920x1080 footage to (what our Comcast division calls a broadcast standard of) 720x480. I recommend the following- and others may disagree. I stumbled upon this method, but it seems to work well.

Place your HD footage in a proper timeline- make sure your Sequence settings are correct (though FCP should prompt you automatically for the proper settings).

I did my color correction and much of my editing in HD.

Then go to your Sequence settings tab and select the new resolution for the project- I used "custom" then input 720x480.

Highlight each scene in the viewer and use the motion tab and the scale function to adjust the size of the content in the new sized window. If you need to adjust which portion of the original footage you want to view, you can press the cross hair on the "Center" tab within the motion tab. A red crosshair will appear in the Viewer (assuming your sync is set to "open") and you can adjust that way.

 

[Moseph]

For other newbs that may find this thread:
...Highlight each scene in the viewer and use the motion tab and the scale function to adjust the size of the content in the new sized window. If you need to adjust which portion of the original footage you want to view, you can press the cross hair on the "Center" tab within the motion tab...

If all you want to adjust is the scale and you want to make it the same for all the clips, you can just copy and paste attributes. Load one of the clips the viewer and make the change under the motion tab. Then, select it in the timeline and hit command C, then select all of your other clips and hit alt V and check off basic motion in the box that comes up. This will copy the basic motion attributes from one clip to all of the others. That's a lot faster than going to every single clip and manually adjusting the scale.

 

[AndrewGentle]

If all you want to adjust is the scale and you want to make it the same for all the clips, you can just copy and paste attributes.

Can't you just drop the complete HD video sequence (or timeline or whatever FCP calls them) into another SD 4:3 one and scale it all at once like that?

 

[_JD_]

Can't you just drop the complete HD video sequence (or timeline or whatever FCP calls them) into another SD 4:3 one and scale it all at once like that?

The only problem that I see is that you have no control over which portion of the footage that will show up. By scaling the HD footage you can select which portion of the HD footage you want to show.

 

[NoahK]

Yeah you do that as a start but then you should go through each edit and make sure the important stuff is centered, if not reframe i.e. pan and scan...

Noah