Just How F'd Am I?

I

indexcardscvs

New member
I shot my first feature film on the HVX200 unaware that there's a difference between Squeeze and Letterbox. I thought Squeeze was simply like having a wide angle lens, instead of a normal one.

So I shot about 70% on Squeeze, the other 30% (mostly close ups) on Letterbox.

Can this be fixed in post production, in other words, can the Letterboxed footage be tweaked to fit the rest of the 16:9 Squeeze stuff?

I appreciate the help guys.
I'm having a ------- heart attack over this one.
 
Not a huge problem.

I am guessing you shot Standard Definition, as I believe HD will not record as letterboxed. You can simply edit the letterboxed clip into a 16:9 sequence, double click it to load it into the viewer and scale the letterboxed clips in the motion panel by 133%.

You can also edit the 16:9 clips into a 4:3 timeline and distort the scale to create a 'letterboxed' clip out of it.


Jason
 
Letterboxed footage in a 16:9 timeline will have the black bars cropped off and be slightly 'up rezzed' (33%). If you are viewing on a 16:9 HD TV, you may notice a slight difference (that is, slightly lower quality). If you are watching on a 4:3 SD TV, the dvd player will produce a letterbox on the footage and it will most likely look identical.

16:9 footage in a 4:3 timeline will become letterboxed. Again it may look slightly higher quality going this direction, but the DVD player may produce pillar box on either of the 16:9 letterboxed footage, when played on a HDTV (making the footage have a complete black frame on all sides).

My opinion is to go with the up rezzed cropped letter boxed footage in 16:9, rather than going the the 4:3 route.

Either way, the goal is to eliminate the distortion caused by 'squeeze mode'.

One final note, if you were simply adding true 4:3 to true 16:9 footage, there are other creative ways to disguise the different aspect ratios (maybe we can leave this for another thread).


Jason
 
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