Still image too narrow

F

frannyglassarrives

Active member
I'm having some difficulty with creating a still image. All of my still images are coming out too narrow as if they were in a garbage compactor. I'm exporting to quicktime compression, 25fps, and have saved as a jpg and a tiff file but still they are squished. Does anyone have any ideas as to what is going on?
 
Check your aspect ratio. Also, did you view them in multiple programs to make sure it's the image and not the viewer?
 
FrannyGlass,
Aspect ratio is part of the codec. It is recorded 'squeezed' and unsqueezed to 16:9 by your NLE.

If you simply need 'screen grabs' as a basic reference, why not just do it with OSX - set FCP to view at 100% on the canvas or full screen on the desktop and press Command + shift + 3. The screen capture will have the correct aspect ratio built in, one fell swoop. If you need precision, as in for color correction or resolution, than you are going to need to export the normal way and go to a program like photoshop as discussed above.


Jason
 
I have the same problem. When QT Conversion produces a still file for me it changes the aspect ratio from 640x480 to 720X480. I don't have photoshop to resize and I prefer not to have to use command shift 3 as it is for a client. How to do instruct QTC to produce stills in an aspect ratio that I what? I can't find that option any where.

Taking a still frame from QT pro player from the video is no good either as I prefer to crop it in iPhoto first.

Thanks
 
Cassius said:
Check your aspect ratio. Also, did you view them in multiple programs to make sure it's the image and not the viewer?
Click to expand...

Ok.. I just came across a revelation. I took a look at the raw .mov of my clip in my Finder and it is 720x480. Why on earth is my Viewer, Canvas, display my video in 640x480, but Finder sees my raw footage as 720x480

I know I'm probably asking a really dumb question...

Confused!

edit: i just realized that my item properties in my Browser sees the clips as 720x480....
 
Last edited:
That's because the pixels in NTSC video aren't perfect square, they are actually rectangular (slightly thinner than they are tall). FCP knows this and adjusts it in the Viewer for you so you see things properly (for example, circles will appear as circles and not ovals). But when you view the same footage outside of FCP, there is no adjustment being made so things look distorted (circles will look like ovals).

That's what pixel aspect ratio is all about.

All NTSC DV footage is 720x480, but when it's adjusted for the difference in pixel aspect ratio, it looks like 640x480 in the Viewer.
 
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