Exporting 16:9 after applying widescreen matte

Hey all,

Quick question: What's the easiest way to CROP (not matte) a sequence or Quicktime file after it has been exported?

I've just painstakingly applied a 1.78 (16:9) matte to my film and I want to get rid of the black bars in the exported video, resulting in a resolution of 720 x 405, I believe (e.g. just the actual frame). Is there any way to do this? My reasoning is that it's wasted disk space, both on the hard drive and on a DVD.

Note, the video is NOT anamorphic -- it is 4:3 source footage matted to 16:9.

Thanks - J

Create a sequence in FCP with the custom frame size of 720x405. Put either the nested sequence or the letterboxed movie file into that and re-export.


www.derekmok.com

There is a way to do it in Quicktime after export. Doing it again in FCP is easier, but if you don't have that option, you can try the quicktime trick.

I went looking for a link to a tutorial I once read on this and for the life of me I can't find it. Here's the bits I remember. Keep in mind that some bits are possibly wrong, and maybe someone else can pick me up on them.

Export a freeze frame of your QT to photoshop.
Draw a matte around your picture. Yes, a matte. It will be removed in QT.
Can't remember if you need to make this matte pure black or pure white. One or the other. Maybe make both, if someone else doesn't know.
Delete the picture, leaving only the matte.
Save this picture. Not sure if the format is important. I'm guessing a png, tiff or similar would be OK.
Open QT
Go to Get Movie Properties from the Movie menu.
Select Video Track. Then next to this choose Mask.
Click the Set button and navigate to your matte picture.
This should crop your picture down to the correct ratio.
Save as a Self-Contained Movie.

I've done it beofre myself, so I can guarantee it can be done, I just can't guarantee my memory of how it's done. Try Google.

OK, now I am feeling stupid.

Don't know why I overlooked this before, but Compressor allows you to crop your image.

I simply opened my Quicktime file in Compressor, cropped it, and set a flag so the resulting output file would be tagged as 16:9. Piece of cake.

Derek, FYI, your suggestion does work, with one caveat -- by default FCP resizes the video when you put it on the new timeline, so you need to open the clip in the viewer and manually change the scale back to 100%. However, I discovered that for some mystical reason this took FOREVER to re-export, so I went with the Compressor option.

Thanks for the suggestions. Always good fuel to kick start the thought processes.

- J