16 x 9 anamorphic to letterbox

If I have a timeline built with 16 x 9 anamorphic footage and I want to output 4 x 3 letterbox how do I do this. And will I need to render the whole timeline.

Thanks

Drag and drop the 16x9 sequence into a 4x3 sequence (or copy/paste all the clips from the 16x9 sequence to the 4x3 sequence). It will automatically be letterboxed. Yes, unfortunately, you will need to render.

Andrew Balis
Lead Final Cut Pro Instructor
www.moviola.com

Drop your 16:9 sequence into a new 4:3 sequence and output that. Your 16:9 footage will scale itself automatically and give you the black bars you want at top and bottom.

If you're trying to avoid lots of rendering then finish your 16:9 project and save as a Quicktime movie. Re-import that movie and drop that into the 4:3 sequence, that way you just have to render the scaling of it and not a nested sequence.

JK

_______________________________________
SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!

When we output to dvd we save our 16:9 sequence as a quicktime movie and import that into studio pro to burn the dvd (check the "letterbox 16:9" option in "display mode". dvd players automatically adjust for the letterboxing and add black bars on a 3:2 tv, but on a widescreen tv, it fills the screen perfectly. if you put the 16:9 sequence into the 3:2 sequence and then output, i suspect a widescreen tv will stretch it.

Zack Coffman
producer/director
Choppertown: the Sinners [www.choppertown.com]
Brittown: a Brit bike documentary [www.brittown.com]

MacBook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 15" 2.4Ghz
Matte Screen
4 GB Corsair Ram
OWC 1TB Raid
Dell 2405FPW
FCP 6.0.4
OSX 10.5.5

Zack -

I'm doing all of that... and when I play back my DVD on my Mac (either G5 (non-Intel) or Intel iMac20) the window adjusts just fine between 16:9 full frame and older stuff as 3:2.

But when I play the DVD on a set top device (1 Samsung and 1 SONY), when the 16:9 scenes play, the window is still 3:2... if you use the remote for the TV and change to WIDE, the pic looks great, but then a 3:2 file comes along, and it is stretched.

So why does the Mac adjust window size to properly display 16:9 vs 3:2, but the set top DVD players do not?

Your Mac is not the same as a DVD player/TV.

When it displays a QT file or a DVD the player will adapt to the size and ratio of the source material and display it correctly on your monitor.

Your DVD player will also correctly output 16:9 or 4:3 material (is that what you meant by 3:2?) BUT unlike the Mac it has NO control over your LCD TV. It cannot tell the TV when to switch aspect ratios and no TV that I know of can detect widescreen material on it's own and switch accordingly -- and I wish someone would make one but that's a whole other rant. How many times have you been to someone's house and watched a film that was playing at the wrong ratio? Most people don't even realize they have to switch it, and to top it off there are several different widescreen ratios (my TV has 4 choices).

You have to manually set it yourself, and if you have both 16:9 and 4:3 material on the same DVD then you will have to switch it in between or one of them will look bad. I've seen this on lots of commercial DVDs even, where the main feature is anamorphic but the bonus material (and even some menus) are not.

First and foremost, pick an aspect ratio for all your videos; if you go with 4:3 then you need to drop any 16:9 video into a 4:3 sequence and render, as stated above. Otherwise, make all your videos widescreen and set your DVD to "16:9" Letterbox mode and make all your menus 16:9 as well. (If you're using DVDSP, look at page 50 of the manual).

HTH,
JK

_______________________________________
SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!

i agree

Zack Coffman
producer/director
Choppertown: the Sinners [www.choppertown.com]
Brittown: a Brit bike documentary [www.brittown.com]

MacBook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 15" 2.4Ghz
Matte Screen
4 GB Corsair Ram
OWC 1TB Raid
Dell 2405FPW
FCP 6.0.4
OSX 10.5.5

if you had the 16/9 and 4/3 material as separate TACKS on the DVD, it should work.

but all joined together? no way.

you say you're "doing that" but what is it your doing?
you can only set one aspect ratio per track.


nick