Wrong aspect ratio still images??

Niels Neeskens

Niels Neeskens

Well-known member
I got a problem with taking still images from final cut. My project is 16:9 and I made freeze frames of the parts of the video I wanted pictures from. If I use Quicktime Conversion and then choose still image I get a picture out of it, but in 4:3. I tried a lot of things, who knows what I am doing wrong here? Thanks

Cheers Niels
 
By any chance is it DVCPro HD codec stuff? The DVCPro HD codecs read with a weird value (960x720 and 1280x1080) but playback and output fine. So with the stills you need to manually "break" the ratio and type in the correct dimensions. I have an action in Photoshop for this now. I just run that after I've exported the still(s).

cheers.
 
Niels,
You are doing nothing wrong.
When you export any 4:3 or 16:9 frames from FCP, it displays in Preview or Photoshop with square pixels that makes it look stretched vertically. This is how computer screen display pixels while video has a rectangular format. Photoshop has a way to display it correctly under Menu>Image>Pixel Aspect Ratio (DV/NTSC Widescreen)

It you bring the still back into FCP into a 16:9 timeline, it should fit fine. If you want to fix it for standard printing, you will have to squeeze it with the proper ratio in Photoshop. (Turn constrain off in Photoshop and decrease the vertical pixels at the correct ratio)

Hope that helps.
 
Bob,

So if you shot 4x3 squeeze, Photoshop shows it squeezed, you'd reduce the vertical pixels to get a clean print? Why wouldn't you increase the horizontal? That's what you're doing in FCP really, you're giving FCP 720x480 and its stretching it to 853x480 for playback. So just curious why you wouldn't do the same in photoshop?

cheers.
 
I think the squeeze you see in Photoshop from a squeezed 4:3 is less (or do I mean more?) squeezed (elongated vertically) than you might think. (Depends on if you are using PS's "Pixel Aspect Ratio" set to "square". )

You can see what happens between square (computer display) and rectangular (video display) pixels by making a square in FCP, export the still frame into photoshop and see it turn into a rectangle. Or visa versa...make a square tiff file in photoshop (using a standard canvas size, not the video presets), import it into FCP and see what happens.

More knowledgable people than me discuss this in great detail.
One good one concerning After Effects is at Creative Cow:
http://www.creativecow.net/show.php?page=/articles/gerard_rick/pixel_madness/index.html
And another PDF is from FreshDV can be found here:
http://www.artbeats.com/community/article.php?id=86

Hope that helps.
 
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