footage shot with the LA7200 16:9 lens

M

mmejido

New member
Hola all. very basic question here. I'd like to shoot an upcoming project using the 16:9 conversion lens (ag-La7200). when using it, the footage is obviously 'smooshed' a bit, for lack of a better term. My question is this: how do you pros usually edit this 16:9 'smooshed' footage? The only way i can think of it is to import it into an editing program, and digitally scale the height down while keeping the width. Is this the common way to do things when using an add-on 16:9 lens?

Thanks!

Michael Mejido
mmejido@gti.net
 
The smooshing is a good thing -- it's the shape of the widescreen television that will un-smoosh it.

Most modern NLE's will automatically compensate and display the footage in the proper aspect ratio when editing.
 
hmm.. I would like to display my project on regular TV's. I would also like to have my project in 16:9, filming with the 16:9 conversion lens instead of the 16:9 in-camera option. How would you deal with the problem of 'smooshed' footage on regular TV's?
 
You can't. That's the thing -- a 16:9 TV is not a 4:3 TV. A 4:3 TV is not a 16:9 TV.

You have to make your footage for one or the other. You cannot make the same footage for both.

About the best you can do is shoot 16:9 for the 16:9 screen, and then squish it down and letterbox it for the 4:3 TV.
 
correct me im wrong...but if u run out to a DVD - then depending on the DVD player (settings) - it should put automattically resize and put bars on 16:9 footage if it is on a 4:3 tv...

the other option obviously is to have 2 versions on the DVD...
 
Yes, if you're making a DVD, DVD players employ hardware aspect ratio conversion and can automatically resize the footage for you.

But if you're going for broadcast, all analog broadcasts in the USA are done in 4:3, so if you're making a BetaSP tape for broadcast, you'll need to do the 4:3 conversion yourself.
 
Post

Post

I use the 16:9 lens for most of my shots.

When you capture the DV data from the camera there is no setting to tell it 16:9, but after you load the data into your POST software you are able to specify the Pixel Aspect Ratio of 1.2121. (Note the actual ratio of the La7200 is 1.33)

The down side is that you have to set the Pixel Aspect Ratio for every clip you import.

Now when you export to MP2 or AVI for DVD creation the file has the 16:9 information.
 
DaRedHead said:
The down side is that you have to set the Pixel Aspect Ratio for every clip you import.
Click to expand...

What editing program are you using? With FCP you can just set the default capture to 16:9 (Widescreen) and it will flag all of the clips as that ratio. Then you don't have to change in with each clip. I assumes that other NLE's have similar options.
 
I use mainly Sony Vegas, but now I am learning Premiere and After Effects.
Slowly the MAC has been taunting me to switch....
 
And I don't know about the rest of you FCP users, but the 16:9 flagging system is not perfect. When 16:9 is set prior to capture, sometimes the information attaches to the clip during capture, sometimes it doesn't - and then I have to go in and manually set it for each of those clips after capture.
 
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