Help! Squeeze mode problem

F

fiftyfirstfloorfilms

New member
Arnoon,

Just bought a dvx100b (PAL) and absolutely love it, makes my antiquated NVDX110 look like childs dribble.

Shot my first bit of footage at the weekend in squeeze mode and successfully edited a 1 minute clip which looks great when played back on TV or PC...however...

I want to upload it onto youtube and despite all my best efforts to convert to various formats (mov or wmv) by the time it gets uploaded into youtube it appears "unsqueezed" and 'orrible looking (see link here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmuouPRAAkg).

Essentially what I am saying is; is it possible to shoot squeezed but have black bars on the footage when it appears on the web?

Apologies if am being daft but this is driving me mad.

Help!

John

:dankk2:
 
When you shoot squeeze, you will not get those black bars. I like the blackbars (letterbox its called) in my stuff, so what i do is just apply a widescreen matte, and make it, oh i dont know, 2:55:1? You can play around with how much of the matte you want to show in the video.

edit- nice video. Pretty good for your first time with the DVX. The composition had a lotta head room in some shots, id say the best shot was the train scene, and the girl is on he right. Did u have an adapter for this?
 
Cheers for the quick response.

Thanks for the comments on the video, yeah composition is not to good, literally spent an hour running around a train station and carpark so not much time, then an hour editing. Not my bag songwise either...mates niece wanted a video! Didnt use an adaptor, i'm just drooling over all the manual features I've been doing without for the past 8 years!

On the problem:

I've letterboxed 4:3 stuff before but i sort of imagined that if you shot in 16:9 (real thing or squeezed) it would appear letterboxed when presented in on a non 16:9 display.
OK, so forgetting the letterboxed effect do you know how best to convert to footage so it appears in nice widescreeny squeezed look on youtube? Youtube just seems to "unsqueeze" into 4:3 on upload. I am using the Super C video converter software to do this business on an avi file and have tried loads of different settings to no avail.

Thanks again
 
Heres my 2 cents:

When you shoot 16:9 squeeze and watch it on a 4:3 TV, you will see the letterbox, black bars. But if it is on a widescreen tv, you won't because the video will fit the TV nicely.

When you shoot 4:3, letterbox, you will see the black bars on your computer.

I shoot 16:9, squeeze. In final cut, when i export a quicktime file, i cheat the file a bit and go to Settings. Then look for Size Settings, and go custom. Type in 720 (thats the width) x 380. (thats the height) Usually you would do something like 720x486. And that's cool, but if you want that nice, widescreen look, make the height 380 so you can see a nice widescreen look. Here are some examples i just exported:

Here is 16:9, 720x486
1194534894.png


and here is 720x380 (custom, i typed that in)

1194534943.png
 
Thanks for the advice.
My real problem seems to be that youtube appears to undo the DVXs 16:9 squeeze effect when footage is uploaded. I'll keep experimenting until it accepts what is bleedin given. Story of my life....10% filming, 10% editing, 80% trying to get computers to work.
 
como:
your widescreen trick is nice but instead of cropping it is just squeezing the frame. you'll have the short & fat look going on if you do it this way.

and yes, you tube will treat 16x9 just as a 4:3 tv would.
 
THE COMO "and yes, you tube will treat 16x9 just as a 4:3 tv would"

Well thats what I would have thought to, but everytime I have tried uploading 25P Squeezed 16:9 footage it comes out as per my link above...ie in 4:3, "unsquashed" and smaller /worse quality than 4:3 letterboxed footage I have uploaded!

Has anyone uploaded squeezed 16:9 footage up onto youtube successfully?
if so I'd be forever in your debt if you could give me details of what format you did it in...i.e. size/type/quality etc. Nothing I have tried seems to work - surely this should be a doddle - I must be missing something obvious?

Thanks for your help - friendly forum.

John
 
John,

you tube will not keep your aspect ratio, it will always letterbox your footage if it is widescreen. Look for other sites such as the one como mentioned.
 
como,

not really sure how you can crop without having black bars. i dunno if it is possible. look in compressor and see if there are any cropping tools in there.
 
TheComo said:
When you shoot squeeze, you will not get those black bars. I like the blackbars (letterbox its called) in my stuff, so what i do is just apply a widescreen matte, and make it, oh i dont know, 2:55:1? You can play around with how much of the matte you want to show in the video.

edit- nice video. Pretty good for your first time with the DVX. The composition had a lotta head room in some shots, id say the best shot was the train scene, and the girl is on he right. Did u have an adapter for this?
Click to expand...

hi como been trying your settings and it's pretty impressive. question though, why is that if i set my dvx100b to squeeze, black bars appear on top and bottom (on my lcd screen and FCP), as far as i know black bars will only appear on letterbox mode. i have a dvc30 too, when i tried squeeze it squeezes the image without any black bars...is there something wrong with my DVX then? thanks.
 
Check out this link
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RJmw5-c2uPs

I shot this scene in sqeeze mode. On a big screen TV it looks great, it fills the whole screen. For youtube, i simply put it on a NON anamorphic timeline, and went into DISTORT...and changed the proportions. It ends up with the black bars on the bottom and top, but sure looks better than what it would if i just uploaded it squeezed. I also used a AKG CK93 Blueline Mic for this scene..

Not sure if that helps...
 
When you export your video full res from fcp set it to the 768x576 square pixel setting or whatever the ntsc version is and it'll export letterboxed for you, then if you use quicktime to compress it'll be fine.

good luck...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top