DV Widescreen 16:9 workflow from FCP- found on iDVD help

HI all! Ken was helping me with this problem I was having with FCP to iDVD, he let me know about this issue, I found this article about it from apple thought I would share. Thanks Ken for saving me! Jen


iDVD: DV widescreen 16:9 workflow from Final Cut Pro


Symptoms

If you export an anamorphic 16:9 DV Sequence from Final Cut Pro with the intention of burning a DVD-Video of that sequence in iDVD, you may need to adjust the aspect ratio of the movie before you include it in your iDVD project. This may be necessary because in some cases, Final Cut Pro does not include the widescreen aspect ratio information that iDVD looks for.

Note: This issue relates specifically to DV format files.

Resolution

Use QuickTime Pro (included with Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Studio) to adjust the aspect ratio of the movie so that iDVD will handle it as intended. This won't re-encode your movie, so there will be no generation loss between Final Cut Pro and iDVD. Only the displayed aspect ratio will be changed.

After you have exported the movie from Final Cut Pro, open it in QuickTime Player.
If the movie is displayed at 16:9 widescreen in QuickTime Player, there's no need to continue these steps. iDVD will treat the movie as widescreen.
If the movie is displayed in QuickTime Player at 4:3 or 3:2 (not widescreen), continue with the steps below.
Choose Window > Show Movie Properties.
In the Properties window, click Video Track in the Name column.
Click the Visual Settings button.
Deselect the checkbox for Preserve Aspect Ratio.
Change the Scaled Size:
For NTSC, enter 853 x 480.
For PAL, enter 1024 x 576.
Now the movie should be displayed at a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Choose File > Save to save the movie.
Now you're ready to create a widescreen iDVD project that will handle the movie as intended.

Additional Information

"Final Cut Pro: DV and Widescreen Video Formats Explained"

QT will show at the correct aspect if you option-J and click on presentation and check the last check box and make the drop down clean. Then save.

why not go thru compressor to get an mv2 file?

also if you have fcp 5 or 6 you also have dvd studio pro which would be much more robust to use.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

The shortcut is Cmd-J. How it displays in QuickTime is not the issue. What's important is how iDVD handles anamorphic material, which is basically it doesn't.

yeah .... yeah what he said.

cmd j

my bad.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

In fact I found out that the procedure described by jenvery works perfectly fine, but only if you did not change the Presentation options; instead, if you first change the Presentation Conform Aspect to Clean, and then change the Visual settings as above, iDVD does not recognize 16:9...
In any case the Presentation options are just for the QT Player, while the Visual settings are also recognized by iDVD.

Piero

SLIGHTLY LEFT OF TOPIC

not just for qt.
in some encoding software i have experienced that the presentation settings are often seen by 3rd party encoders. Such as DVKitchen.

if you put a 16/9 qtsc in dvkitchen and choose quickspecs it needs the presentation clean to be saved to file to create 640X360. I know it may sound a bit unusual but try it and see. If you do not have the presentation clean setting you get 4/3 after cooking.

Visual settings does make it concrete and those setting are recognized by any program with 16/9 capabilities.

Which this totally does not help the poster but when i did note that.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Thanks for correcting me. I made experience only with iDVD and QT player...

Piero