My first widescreen short film... HELP!!

S

sebastiangomez

New member
This is a great forum that i just found out about today.

OK, here goes for my first post. I just finished capturing and editing into Final Cut HD my latest project. I shot it with a SONY DV camera with the widescreen function ON. This camera doesn not fake the black bars but actually shoots anamorphic.

My problem: The edit can be played in my viewer perfectly but as soon as I export it, it plays 4:3 and it's all messed up obviously. Another thing, is that I want to add some effects and titles with Motion but cannot for the life of me seem to be able to import the FCP sequence in 16:9... does anyone know what I'm missing?

I need this farely quickly for a festival submission. Thank you all for your help.

Sebastian Gomez
www.sebastiangomez.com
 
Re: My first widescreen short film... HELP!!

Couple questions:

How are you accomplishing the widescreen in FCP? Is it a 720 x 480 sequence with black bars or the "widescreen" filter (aka "letterbox")? Or did you actually create a sequence that had the final size you wanted as its size? Or did you use a 720 x 480 anamorphic?

What program are you exporting with? Compressor? QuickTime?

Can't help you on the Motion part, but perhaps with the others!
 
Re: My first widescreen short film... HELP!!

Alright.

First, I captured the footage in iMovie HD (don't ask why, I just wanted to try it out). I then imported the footage into FCP and started editing. The viewer and canvas monitors were widescreen (no blackbars but actual 16:9 format) so I assume that the whole sequence and project are anamorphic.

I am trying to export it with quicktime (not quicktime conversion) and have it give me a 4:3 size but with the widescreen bars and my edit untouched as far as stretching the image goes.

The only thing I have been able to do, is export the edit all messed up and stretched and then re-import it in a 4:3 project that is not anamorphic to then use the motion tab to tamper with the size of the screen within the 4:3 box. Basically it works but it's a pain and I'm sure that there is a way with FCP to do all of this automatically. I'm using to many steps and loosing quality and time.

Thank for all the help.

Sebastian Gomez • www.sebastiangomez.com
 
Re: My first widescreen short film... HELP!!

What is the final out version? Just a .mov file? Or are you going to dvd? Or are you going back to tape?

If you are going say to the web then you'll need to use Compressor... use one of the presets that say WIDESCREEN. This will change the aspect ratio for you. Remember, QT doesn't know or care what you WANT to do with the video -- it just sees 4:3. You have to tell it you want to stretch the pixels back.

Good luck,

CaptM
 
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