The trailer that LAFCPUG helped me edit - thanks, guys! Tech questions :-)

[www.releasing.net]

I really appreciate the help with my new movie trailer. I know there is still room for improvement, but I've learned a lot from you guys. I'd appreciate your help in solving a couple of my technical problems.

Is there any way I can remove the upper and lower black bars? I think this will help me shrink the size of the trailer, which is now at 7 MB. The format is 16:9
I used Derek's matte recommendations. THey worked beautifully.

Another think is that -- this is a funny thing -- I saved a compressor format but I don't remember exactly what it was. Can you tell me what's the format of this trailer? Is it mpeg 1 or just a plain mp4 ? Is it sorenson 3 ? Please help me understand if this is a good format for this size clip for placing over the Internet.

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Post Edited (07-19-06 21:24)

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Go here

[www.rippletraining.com]

Download the Final Cut Pro Tutorial 17 movie

Your filename says it's a Sorenson 3 QuickTime movie, but the file format is MPEG-4. To check a QuickTime movie's format, open it in QuickTime Player and press APPLE-I.

Is there any way I can remove the upper and lower black bars? I think this will help me shrink the size of the trailer, which is now at 7 MB. The format is 16:9
I used Derek's matte recommendations. THey worked beautifully.


-Yes.
I dont know exactly what you have done to actually get black bars in the first place. They should not be there if the film was shot on widescreen.

If you shot in in 4:3 and then added them (cropped or covered) you can always make a new sequence that has the size of you movie without the black bars. (720 by 405 in PAL I believe) Press Apple + 0 to get the settings
Drag your final sequence or final video into this sequence and render out.

My recommendation for compressing for the net is H.264, although it only works in QT7.
It is superior to other quicktime formats.



Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Thank you, Johan! That's what I was looking for. I'm going to do it with the next version of the trailer. BTW, my movie is on 35mm -- full Academy Aperture. I put the matte that Derek explained in another thread. It allows for reframing of shots, which is really a great way to correct badly framed shots -- besides creating the 16:9 frame. ... But I wanted to remove the black bars because everything is being shot widescreen these days.

Thanks again, Derek, for your comments.

And, Joey, I agree with you: Master Yoda is a very profound philosopher, especially what he says is relevant to cutting trailers. I mean, after all, he was created by George Lucas!

<<<full Academy Aperture. >>>

It's either full aperture or Academy Aperture. Generally not both.

There is a format that has both and that's 2.35 CinemaScope. That format has a 2:1 anamorphic lens in front of the camera and is full aperture top to bottom and Academy Aperture side to side.

Koz

Koz, thanks for responding. Regarding the format -- I was just trying to give some general information. My camera, actually, has a Super 35mm gate. In other words, the soundtrack area has been machined out. This is how I bought the camera. I wish they hadn't done that. Otherwise it's Academy Aperture; i.e., the top and bottom part of the gate is standard. I know some camera rental houses used to machine out the top and bottom part of the frame also, which allowed for more picture to be recorded. I hated that -- I actually once had a camera like that (bought it used). I prefer the Academy Aperture because of the stability of the film, as it's supported properly on all sides. As you know Super 35mm became popular with television and video productions, as they didn't need the optical sound; they shot the film for television only, and if they wanted to make a theatrical print, they made an optical master. But this is a whole other subject.

Thanks to your help, I was able to mount this new version of the trailer for my 35mm feature film BUTTERFLIES IN THE WIND.

Johan, that was a great tip you gave me regarding the screening format for the web. It was trial and error for me, because I hadn't done this before, but the resultant widescreen without the black bars on top and bottom is fantasitc. Frankly I haven't seen it on the web yet.

Derek, thanks again for your help. I was able to modify the framing of my shots in the widescreen format using your special mask. I really like this tool. You should've copyrighted it (I don't know if it could be done :-)

Finally I have a trailer for my movie at my website:

<a href="[www.releasing.net]; target="_blank">

How do you write a link?

Oh, by the way, the size of the trailer is almost 8 MB.

I was watching many trailers on the Apple website. All the major feature films are using the 2.33:1 format.

The format is really stretched! I don't think it looks nice at all. I much prefer the 1.85:1 or even the 1.77:1 (16:9) formats.

Anyway, I noticed that my file extension ended up as .mov

I thought I'd made a h.264 and it should've been an mpeg4 format, shouldn't it have?