misbehaving letterboxing

C

Claire Curtis

New member
I filmed some footage using camera settings > letterbox on a Panasonic DVX100.

The footage looks fine in 4:3 on the viewfinder.

When it imports into Premiere or iMovie it automatically imports as 16:9 but stretches out (distorts) into widescreen with the black top and bottom letterboxing strips.

When I try to force an import into 4:3, it still imports as letterboxed but (imovie at least) crops the film -- and it's still distorted.

What is causing this? I would be happy with either a 4:3 or a 16:9 image, but this neither-nor is driving me crazy.

I just discovered there is such a thing as an anamorphic lens adaptor for this camera; is the problem that the widescreen setting is only to be used in conjunction with this adaptor? And if so, how do I salvage my footage?

Thanks...
 
When you shoot in letterbox, you're shooting in 4:3 WITH the black bars on there from the camera. If you want true 16:9 you need to shoot on SQUEEZE mode. That will give you what you need.
 
iMovie is a bit bare-bones, but I can't think of why Premier would do this...
Do make sure you create your new project as a 4:3 SD project.
Try starting a fresh project this way...
It's not always about how you capture, but what your Project dimensions are set to.
Weird...
 
It IS weird.
The problem is not that I'm getting the letterboxing -- the problem is that no matter how I try to import it, the footage is distorted - stretched wide.

Perhaps you are only supposed to use the letterbox setting with an anamorphic lens? That would explain matters -- with film, an anamorphic lens distorts the image so it fits on 4:3 (more or less) film; this is then undistorted (stretched) on playback, adding the black bands to fill space if necessary. If the dvx100 expected a distorted image, and encoded it to "undistort" on playback, then an non-distorted image would be distorted like this on playback. I think.

But I don't think that can be the reason. I don't see the use of an anamorphic lens mentioned here, though several people mention using the 'letterbox' setting (though 'squeeze' seems to be the preferred method). Wouldn't someone mention it if a special lens were required?

Bottom line -- how do I get my footage to look undistorted? IE, squish the 16:9 section of the display to 4:3?
A force-feed method might be to import it into FCE as 16:9, keyframe it and distort the active portion of the screen to a windowbox that resembles 4:3, render, then reimport into a 4:3 project with cropping of the black area. But that seems to me a sure recipe for a significant loss of resolution.

I'm praying there is just some way to import directly into 4:3. Anyone know?

I have some other footage that has to be 16:9, but if I can understand how this situation came to be, I might be able to figure out what to do there.
 
Check your interpret settings. In the BIN, right click on a clip and then select INTERPRET. From there you should be able to select different aspect ratios. Let me know if this works. It should force it to be corrected. Square pixels is the default for 4:3.
 
Something is wonky in your settings somewhere.
You should be able to import into a 4:3 with no trouble.

For clarification:

If you shoot letterbox - you DO end up with a 4:3 project.
The black bars are just part of the image.

You cannot put letterbox directly into a 16:9 project or output.

To get 16:9 out of the DVX100 use SQUEEZE mode only.
Don't worry about any quality loss - zillions of pros on this forum will tell you that the image quality is as good as the DVX gets. i.e. the slight resolution loss in negligible.
 
You were asking about the anamorphic adapter? It is $750 ish. I am seriously considering it, but basically it performs the same task as squeeze mode, but you don't loose any resolution.

In squeeze, you chop off about 25% of the resolution on the top and bottom so that it can stretch upwards and downwards. The anamorphic adapter distorts the image so that it does that without loosing resolution. You film in regular 4:3 and then just import it as anamorphic 16:9 (same as you would with squeeze footage) and it automatically stretches it out for you. Squeeze mode is for if you don't have adapter. But now that I think about it, if you shot with the adapter AND squeeze, you would get some funky cool extreme widescreen like 2.35:1 which is what movies are sometimes cropped to.
 
I'm having the same thing: DVX100 (so no squeeze mode possible: it's not the A or the B). For now I just regret buying Corel VideoStudio X2. I bought that before I got the DVX and for my old consumer camera it was a fine learning-by-doing program.

My solution was a work-around: in VideoStudio X2 I can place the footage in a 16:9 timeline and stretch and crop and stretch and crop and soforth until it's right. But it sucks bigtime. So my preferred workaround is to just shoot 4:3 and later reframe/crop so it become's 16:9. Upside is that I can adjust the framing a little -wich turned out to be quite handy some moments- and the downside is that it is some extra work.

I blame the software. But I must admit reading your posting makes me doubt that a little.
 
You should be able to capture the footage and view it normally in a 4:3 timeline, though the letterbox bars will always be there because they're a permanent part of the picutre -- which is why nearly everyone agrees that you shouldn't bother with letterbox; shoot squeeze, or if you have an original DVX, shoot full-frame 4:3 and do any cropping to 16:9 in post.

It has nothing to do with the anamorphic adapter, and if you use letterbox with the adapter, you're kind of robbing yourself of some of th benefit of it.
 
You can do this: Shoot 4:3, but to know what you are framing, turn on letterbox and put scotch tape over the black bars and then turn it of again. Then you know what you are shooting so you don't get anything important cut off. There are also things called screen skins that are pre-fit to the LCD size, but tape is easier.
 
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