converting 16:9 FHA to 4:3 in FCP

I am not sure about this. I have been asked to convert footage shot 16:9 FHA to 4:3. I have never been asked nor have I ever made this conversion. To my knowledge you either shoot 16:9 or 4:3. I know 16:9 FHA is a 4:3 frame but??? Where to go on this? I know that a telecine suite can do this but can FCP 5.1.4 or Natress Film look filters. Cheers Y'all Phil UK

wat's fha?

Full Height Anamorphic.

Check the FAQ here : 16:9 and 4:3

It has a link to a tutorial that deals with going both ways.

Basically you can drop it in a 4:3 timeline and accept the auto letterboxing, or remove attributes, scale and accept losing the edges of the frame.

nest the sequence and drop it into a 4:3 timeline? It automatically adds the letterbox.

or add a -33.33 distort

I tried the 4:3 timeline, my hearts not in it so I'm going to a telecine house. This will come back to haunt me and it I can (with confidence) do this conversion in FCP that would be Brilliant.

"his will come back to haunt me and it I can (with confidence) do this conversion in FCP that would be Brilliant."\

This is really quite simple.
You have 2 options:

Letterbox or cut the sides off to fit 4:3.

Either one of them should take you no more than a few seconds in FCP.

Just place the final anamorphic timeline into a 4:3 timeline and adjust it there.
Automatically it will probably just letterbox.
If thats what you want then thats all you need to do.

If you want to cut the sides off then there are a few ways of doing it, all of them pretty easy and straight forward....

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Apologies for the confusion. I work in 16:9 to 4:3 conversion pretty regularly, just that no one calls it FHA here. Yup. Throwing in the sequence into a 4:3 timeline will automatically add a -33.33 distort (or an anamorphic distort). For analog SD broadcast, it is almost always in 4:3 (does anyone air SD in 16:9?). For Pan and scan, add the distort and explode it to full screen- you can pan and scan if you want.

(does anyone air SD in 16:9?)

Well, yes, as a matter of fact they do. Probably 50% of what we do ends up letter boxed 16 x 9 SD. This is for MTV, Spike, Lifetime, and various other cable networks.

Mark

Quote

does anyone air SD in 16:9

All UK broadcast is 16:9 HD or 16:9 FHA SD we don't do 4:3 anymore (unless its simulcast) and at the end of the year we start moving over to full digital, dropping analogue transmissions in many parts of the country.

FHA is standard speak for a 16:9 picture on a 4:3 frame. A good one to introduce to your work as it will become more common in the US as you move to widescreen in the not to distant future...

...hopefully.


Phil - do it in FCP, its very easy as the guys have pointed out above. You won't gain anything from going to a TK suite.



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So FHA is an 'unanamorphic' 16:9 picture on 4:3 (so it requires the set to anamorphasize it to 16:9 on broadcast?)

Ben King Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> does anyone air SD in 16:9
>
> All UK broadcast is 16:9 HD or 16:9 FHA SD we
> don't do 4:3 anymore (unless its simulcast) and at
> the end of the year we start moving over to full
> digital, dropping analogue transmissions in many
> parts of the country.

Actually everything is simulcast - shows are flagged according to content, mostly either 4:3 or 14:9 protected and the arc in the analogue transmission path converts the FHA signal to either 4:3 full height or puts it in a 14:9 letterbox within a 4:3 frame (thus losing a sixth of the picture width rather than a third).

Lots of our 'digital' channels are still 4:3 - I would say it must be most of them actually.

Our brethren in the states won't have to worry too much about FHA as HD is in a native 16:9 frame.

For the OP - by all means go to a TK house, they'll probably use a hardware arc and do some panning and scanning, but most UK shows are arced within either FCP or Avid. Mostly from 4:3 to 16:9 FHA these days. Yes and sometimes that is on a shot that has gone through the process the other way too... nice.