Ok, one more time....anamorphic to widescreen....

After reading many posts I believe I've found the satisfactory solution. I shot HDV in letterbox squeezed, if my memory is correct. I'm editing in final cut pro and everything looks great but my clips have anamorphic checked. This iDVD produced DVD will be duplicated and distributed to 500 people so does it make sense since I am using iDVD to produce it in letterbox since it sounds like anamorphic is no easy task with this software? Also, I'm sure my clients won't all have widescreen TVs and my understanding is anamorphic will invariably squeeze an image on an SD TV. Anyway, I distorted the footage to -33 aspect in FCP and I'm happy overall. Is this the easiest or only way to achieve letterbox? I've played with the sequence settings, the qt movie settings, the qt conversion settings and this seems to be the only solution that works for me. Thanks.

Morris Barrier
Apple Powermac G4 dual 450(applesaurus rex) w/768 RAM
OS X 10.4
FCP HD

capture & edit as anamorphic.

export your final sequence as a QuickTime movie, same settings.

before you bring it into iDVD you need to run it though a tiny 3rd party app called "The Anamorphiciser"
[homepage.mac.com]

this is because iDVD can only see files as anamorphic that have come from iDVD.
if you used your FCP export in iDVD, it would NOT flag it as 16/9, and it would play squeezed.

running it through The Anamorphiciser will add a flag to the file, and then iDVD will encode it as 16/9 and it will play letter-boxed on a standard TV, and full screen on a wide TV

another way is to LETTERBOX in FCP.
you make a new 4/3 sequence,
drag your final 16/9 sequence into it (you;ve read the posts)
this creates a 4/3 letter-boxed image.
it'll play that way on a standard TV.

good thing about the other way,m is if people view on a widescreen TV, they'll see it full screen.
(plus less work for you )


cheers,
nick

Thanks Nick. I have a copy of 'anamorphsizer' but haven't tried it yet but will this evening. It sounds like it gives the best of both worlds to the client.