upconverting to 720p, aspect ratio question

[Nicholas Natteau]

I'm importing and upconverting (480i to 720p) my footage into FCP7 via hardware with a Kona LHi card.

AJA's Kona LHi card has several aspect ratio options for upconverting 480i to 720p:
• Anamorphic
• Pillarbox 4:3
• Zoom 14x9
• Zoom Letterbox
• Zoom wide

I'm hoping to avoid upconverting using Pillarbox 4:3 look since my interviews were shot in HD (16:9).
I know can zoom into the upconverted 4:3 pillarboxed clips manually in my FCP7 timeline, but then I lose 33% of the upconverted footage above and below.

So is it ok to use "Anamorphic" in the broadcast world, or is that unacceptable? I know there would be a slight flattening of the image, but is that ok for distribution?

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

 

[NoahK]

Wait was the 480 footage shoot anamorphic 16:9? If so- it should scale right up to 720p without issue. If it was 4:3 then you'd get pillar boxing. And yes anamorphic is very much accepted in the broadcast world- just be sure to mark as such.

Noah

 

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Noah, I should have clarified that my source footage is 4:3 SD not 16:9.

So my question is: For broadcast and distribution purposes, if you want to avoid the 4:3 pillarbox look, is it ok to select "anamorphic" as the destination aspect ratio knowing that it will result in a slightly horizontally flattened image? Is that legit in the broadcast world? Or is that forbidden? Do broadcasters require that 4:3 SD footage remain 4:3 when being upconverted to HD? Thanks very much in advance.

 

[NoahK]

well no- you can't do squishy- that is not acceptable. If you want 4:3 in a 16:9 project you'll have to crop it and carefully reframe so that a portion of the screen that you want is visible. Really no way around that. It's a square peg into a rectangular hole.

Noah