crop 4:3 to 16:9

I'm cutting a six-hour documentary, 16mm 4:3, which we will eventually need to crop to 16:9 for DVD release. To preserve composition, some shots need cropping the top, some the bottom, and some need to preserve the middle of the frame. Anyone know a FCP workflow for "tilt-and-scan"?

Using a 17" MacBook Pro dual 2.16, 2G RAM, Firewire 800, am I stuck rendering every shot in the film during DV offline? Online will be 2k HDcam SR 4:4:4 to DVI for film-out.

16:9 is bigger then 4:3. You don't just crop it, you have to zoom it and then crop it. This can mean quite a loss of picture quality. Do you really need to go 16:9?

If you do decide to do this, all you need to do is scale the shots until they fill the frame horizontally, turn on 'image and wireframe' in the canvas (top right of the canvas, small menu button) grab the image in the canvas, hold shift so that you move in a straight line and then drag the footage up or down until your composition is correct.

But do some tests and see if the loss of quality is too much for your show first.

What codec will you be editing in?

I would suggest getting the film transferred into DVCProHD, then working in a DVCProHD 16x9 timeline.

After you've made your edits, after color correction & before titles, use the motion tab to blow all clips up to fill the frame on the right & left.

Now, clip by clip, you can go through and slide the clip up and down in the frame to frame it however you want. (You'll want to use wireframe mode in the canvas for this --- hold shift while moving the frame up and down to avoid going diagonal or left/right accidentally).

Knowing that you'll be compressing to MPEG2 for dvd, the blowup shouldn't be too big an image loss.

(Jude beat me to it and said it so much more elgantly)

travis ballstadt
www.thrillcateditorial.com

G5DP2.5ghz, 4.5gbRAM, 2TB external SATA, Panasonic AJ-D455, G4PB1ghz, 15", 1gbRAM

Oh sorry, I missed that you shot 16mm. The blow up could (should?) be fine.

Thanks for the tips. The 16mm film was transferred on a Spirit 2K to HDcam SR 4:4:4, so the blown-up resolution should still exceed DVD (I don't know about BluRay.)

Please explain this to me. This is a very interesting process.

If you're going to move the frame up and down to get the best slice of the picture, what are you going to do with the uneven upper and lower portions of the frames respectively?

Are you going to use a 16:9 mask? Or are you going to do it in compression or in DVD SP mode when choosing 4:3 or 16:9 ?

And what about squeazing the new, cropped 16:9 frame into the 4:3 framesize so it becomes anamorphic? Are you going to do that?

In a 16x9 frame, there are no uneven uppers and lowers.

You're blowing the 4x3 (12x9) up so the sides are filled (16x12). The uneven uppers and lowers are cut out of the frame, as the sides are in a pan and scan (which is the exact opposite process of what's being discussed here).

travis ballstadt
www.thrillcateditorial.com

G5DP2.5ghz, 4.5gbRAM, 2TB external SATA, Panasonic AJ-D455, G4PB1ghz, 15", 1gbRAM

You aren't going to be outputting to HDCAM SR 4:4:4 from your system with a firewire drive, so what is the workflow going to be? All the above suggestions would apply to figuring out the cropping issues in your offline and then you have to get those decisions to online.

I wish I knew this a month ago. Oh, well, it's better now than never :-)

So what are the project presets so you end up with a 16:9 frame where the 4:3 will be inserted and zoomed out to fill the sides?

Offline master will crop each SD 4:3 frame with green bars at the top, bottom, or both, as a guide for online HD blow-up and "tilt-and-scan". (Green instead of black, so the desired framing will be more obvious to the online editor.) Online flow is from 2k HDcam SR - through FCP, BlackMagic 4:4:4, Smoke, and back out to SR.

First we must explore exporting the FCP EDL to Avid Nitris for online, to exploit that particular facility's standard equipment bay. To stay in FCP through online will require re-rigging and re-patching their FCP edit bays, which currently don't access the SR decks.

The "Full Screen" DVD will be the original 4:3 SD, and the "Wide Screen" version will be the downconverted 16:9 HD. Does anyone know if BluRay and HDDVD release both aspect ratios?

Nitris, Smoke wha?
Capturing what into FCP? Uncomp 4:4:4? An offline res? Or are you capturing full HD to FCP over Blackmagic and then transferring those files to Smoke? How are you doing that?

Get the Duck for FCP to Nitris.

That DVD plan seems a little whack, yes? The widescreen version is actually just a cropped version of the full screen version. Opposite to feature releases where the Widescreen release is the full film frame, (not academy but projected) letter-boxed and the full screen is a pan and scan of the widescreen. There's nothing extra in your widescreen version, in fact there is less.

Hi Boyd

Do you need to do a letterbox widescreen version for a particular reason?

As Jude mentioned earlier:

You can create an SD 16:9 anamorphic timeline.

Add your 4:3 footage and scale it to 133.33%

The top and bottom of the 4:3 clip will be off the screen.

If needed you can move your shots up and down within that frame.

This will create an 16:9 anamorphic master for your DVD

This is my recommendation rather than applying a widesreen mask to 4:3 sequence which will only give you a 16:9 letterbox on 4:3 master.


There are some questions that I would like you to answer if you can.

? What is your offline footage captured into FCP as?

? If the offline source tapes are copied (ie: to DVCAM) from source (HDCAM SR). Is the offline footage timecode synced with the HDCAM SR Telecined Rushes?

? What framerate(s) do the Film, the HDCAM SR, the offline and the Master run at?

? Why are you making a green letterbox? Unless you are making a semi-transparent letterbox, then making a letterbox at all is fairly pointless for a 16:9 DVD


Let us know ASAP and we can try and resolve any issues you may be getting or may encounter during the edit.


Regards

Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

I need a 16:9 aspect ratio now, because the audience does now (decades after the 4:3 original film.)

Everything HD is 23.98. Downconverted offline is 29:97 NTSC DV with NDF timecode matching HDcam SR 2K 4:4:4 masters.

Green represents cropped areas only for clarity, to help the Online Editor match the variable cropping while creating the 16:9 version.

The HD masters are side cropped, wasting some data, but preserving the entire vertical frame. We could have stretched the original frame and, in an anamorphic master, exploited the full 2K resolution, but the added complexity seemed overwhelming at decision time.

Composition inevitably suffers from any change of aspect ratio. The camera operators composed those 4:3 frames to the best of their artistic ability, and any change compromises that.

To minimize the damage, pan-and-scan is used when going from wide screen to full screen; tilt-and-scan must be used when going the other way. When GONE WITH THE WIND was restored, composition suffered from the limitations of film printing and opticals. Same with FANTASIA. But now we have the digital tools to create frame-by-frame compensations that are dynamic and fluid. Some of the shots can even be improved. This seems worth the minor resolution compromises that are barely visible, if at all.

We don't yet know whether we will online with Nitris, or FCP and Black Magic.

Other recommendations for DUCK?

This discussion was very interesting for me, but since it deals a lot with the larger formats and HD issues, my question was lost in the shuffle. I'll try to ask it one more time; I hope someone will have the patience to answer it. Sorry. ... perhaps Ben?

So dropping 4:3 frame-line-adjusted scenes into a 16:9 anamorphic project/sequence and then expanding the frame in Motion to +1.33 will result into an anamorphic 4:3 framed sequence?

Thanks for your patience.

Ok here is a graphic I just made to illustrate the different scaling and aspects for 4:3 on 16:9 and 16:9 on 4:3 for square pixel and anamorphic footage.

It should be clear from this what you need to do to achieve the format you require.



Please feel free to link to it on future questions about scaling and aspects.

Hope this helps

Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

To answer your other questions Boyd:

HDCAM SR only does maximum of 1920x1080 HD video not 2K:

@1080i: 50, 59.94, 60 Hz
@1080PsF: 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97 and 30 Hz
@720P: 59.94 Hz


For the DV offline on your spec Mac you shouldn't need to render until you export or playout

? set to Unlimited RT & Dynamic video quality

You should be able to move the clips and scale them without impairing your playback too much. Of course to get the full quality you should render.

Regards

Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Thats very cool Ben. Boy is this subject worth an article. Confuses hell out of "newbies" until they just "see" it.

Michael Horton
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