16:9 image imported into 4:3 sequence..help getting full 16:9 back to DVD

I have a 35mm film that was telecined to miniDV and imported into FCP as a 4:3 image from the miniDV tapes.

Now I'm trying to get a close-to-full screen image on a DVD. I understand that I'll have black bars on top and bottom no matter what because of the aspect ratio we shot in but something is happening when it's being exported or burned to DVD because the DVD image is considerably more compressed vertically than the sequence is (which is playing directly out to my 16:9 flat screen from my Mac onto the same TV as the DVD).

Just to clear up one thing I've done...

I've played the sequence out of Final Cut Pro to an external monitor (my 16:9 TV) and made markings on the screen with post it notes where the black bars start. When I play the DVD though, the black bars are deeper towards the center of the screen.

The image is starting to look way too narrow. Any way to stretch this image vertically without going back to source tapes/film?

Thank you for any help that you can give.

Best,

Jon

need a bit more info, Jon,

but i *suspect* you may have a 4/3 sequence with your 16/9 footage letterboxed,
and you are telling DVD studio pro (or whatever) that it's Anamorphic.

is the image on DV letterboxed, or Anamorphic (looks squished)?
in FCP do you have BLACK bars at the top and bottom of the canvas?


nick

> I have a 35mm film that was telecined to miniDV and imported into FCP as a 4:3 image from
> the miniDV tapes.
> Now I'm trying to get a close-to-full screen image on a DVD.
> the DVD image is considerably more compressed vertically than the sequence is

?????

Your terminology is all over the place, so it's hard to tell exactly what you have.

Is the original footage anamorphic on the tape? Or just letterboxed?

> I've played the sequence out of Final Cut Pro to an external monitor (my 16:9 TV) and made
> markings on the screen with post it notes where the black bars start.

That's another problem. Playing a 4:3 image through a widescreen TV will often result in an image that's horizontally stretched. Are the proportions actually correct when you screen the footage this way? Do you get "pillarboxing" (black bars on the side)? If your footage isn't anamorphic, but is only letterboxed, you should not be able to get correct proportions without pillarboxing.

You might want to post screen captures and/or exports of still frames from your original clips to show us exactly what you've got.


www.derekmok.com

Thank you both so much for your offer to help. I've posted images at the following link. Please let me know what other information would assist you in helping me with my problem.

Thank you again,

Jon Brown

[web.me.com]

Your problem isn't with FCP, it's with your DVD authoring. You're working with a 4:3 sequence in FCP, but somehow in your DVD authoring, you're authoring a 16:9 DVD, or else your TV is set to stretch 4:3 video to fill a 16:9 screen. If the latter is the case, then you need to reconfigure your set to display 4:3 footage either pillarboxed or else in zoom mode where it blows up the image until the width reaches the sides of the TV.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that might be your problem. However, if it's in the DVD authoring process then you need to describe how you are building your DVD. Are you using compressor? Are exporting a QT first or exporting straight to compressor? If you are using compressor, did you check the video encoder to make sure that it's on 4:3 instead of 16:9? What program are you using to build your DVD?

Andy

I'm exporting from fcp using the QuickTime export option. Not QuickTime coversion setting. The other one.

Importing into DVD studio pro and changing the aspect to 16:9 on the track setting. This way you don't get pillarboxing on the DVD and don't have to zoom the tv set to get a full image.

I would like it to be set up in which the DVD plays without pillarboxing. Any way of doing this and getting a full or close to full screen image?

Thanks!!!

You can't just take a 4:3 image and stretch it to 16:9 in the DVD authoring and expect it to maintain the proper aspect. This is why it looks wrong.

If you want a 16:9 DVD, then you have to scale the video in a 16:9 sequence in FCP first, then encode a 16:9 MPEG. Then create a 16:9 DVD.

Andy

> Importing into DVD studio pro and changing the aspect to 16:9 on the track setting. This way
> you don't get pillarboxing on the DVD and don't have to zoom the tv set to get a full image.

Wrong. That only works if your media was native 16:9 (eg. DVCPro HD, HDCam etc.) or anamorphic 16:9 SD (720x480 or 720x486, image vertically stretched to fill the frame).

Your footage is letterboxed SD; the black bars are part of your image. Which means you have to treat it like normal 4:3 footage; you can't make an anamorphic 16:9 DVD from that. Unless you manually distort the image vertically so that the image part fills the entire 4:3 frame. Which means you'll be blowing up your image and then shrinking it back down.

If you'd wanted an anamorphic 16:9 DVD, then the transfer was wrong to begin with -- the tapes should have been anamorphic.


www.derekmok.com

So should I create a new sequence for 16:9 settings and copy paste the 4:3 project into it and then adjust any deforming of the image with the aspect ratio and scaling? I know this is probably not the correct way ideally but will it work in giving me a 16:9 image?

Thank you.

Quote

So should I create a new sequence for 16:9 settings and copy paste the 4:3 project into it and then adjust any deforming of the image with the aspect ratio and scaling?

hey, Jon.

simple answer: yes!
but its not a copy/paste situation, its a "nest" situation.

i worked on a film last year like yours:
1.85 image in a 4/3 frame with burn ins top & bottom.

what we did for some screenings and dvds when we didn't want to show the burn-ins was this:

make a new sequence that matches your current clip & sequence settings in every way EXCEPT it is anamorphic.

drag the current 4/3 sequence/s into that anamorphic sequence.
you'll get a warning asking you if you want to match the settings, say NO
this nests the sequences, and will "pillar-box" them.

OPTION double click on the nests to open them in the viewer,
go to the Motion tab.
change scale to 133.33
and distortion to 33.33

this will blow up your image to fit the 16/9 frame.
finally open the sequence settings, go to "Video Processing" and change "Motion Filtering" to BEST

render, and export.

this is what we did.
there may be a way to do this in compressor, but we were primarily making QuickTimes for screenings, so FCP was the way to go for us.


cheers,
nick

Quote
nick
make a new sequence that matches your current clip & sequence settings in every way EXCEPT it is anamorphic.

actually a really simple way to do this is to make the new sequence,
drag the old one into it,
and when you get the warning, say YES.

this way the sequences will really match in every way.

then you open the new sequence settings and change it to anamorphic.


cheers,
nick

I've tried it a few times but I'm not getting a warning.

I open a new sequence with identical settings. Copy and paste from the timeline to the new timeline. Changed the sequence setting to anamorphic. It squeezes the image.

When I was exporting the originally sequence to DVD Studio Pro and changing the setting in DVDSP to 16:9 letterbox, the image that would be produced on the DVD was very similar to how it looks in my monitor from FCP from the above approach.

Any ideas?

Thank you so much for you help with this.

I guess, as a last resort, I'll just burn it as a 4:3. Then I end up with a windowboxed image. If I do this, any ideas on how to guide the viewer into zooming their 16:9 (would I put a note on the menu or something?) I would just hate to have the festivals watch it on a 16:9 as the windowboxed image.

Thank you!

Jon

Making a 16:9 sequence from a 4:3 sequence isn't hard. You just have to blow up the 4:3 image. Try this:

Create a new anamorphic sequence in the same codec as your 4:3 sequence.

Drag your 4:3 sequence into the 16:9 sequence. When it asks if you want to conform your sequence to match your clip, select NO.

OPT+double-click your nested sequence to open it up in the viewer.

Go to the Motion tab and change the scale to 134.

This will scale the horizontal borders of your 4:3 sequence to the 16:9 frame. Your aspect ratio will be correct.

Export as a Self-contained Quicktime. Drag that QT into Compressor.

Apply your DVD preset. Select the applied preset in the jobs window to bring up it's properties in the inspector.

Click the encoder button (2nd from the left) to bring up the encoder settings. Make sure that the aspect ratio says 16:9. If it doesn't, click the little gear icon to the right of the Aspect Ratio setting, and then choose 16:9 from the drop down.

Click Submit and built your DVD with all the settings on 16:9.

Andy

Your film may end up a bit soft, but that is because you are starting with letterboxed 4:3 footage. If you wanted to end up 16:9, you should have seen if the Telecine company could have produced anamorphic tapes for you. But this is the only way to get 16:9 video from 4:3 and maintain the proper aspect ratio.

Quote
jonb3333
I've tried it a few times but I'm not getting a warning.

If you're not getting a warning, then you probably have your preferences set to automatically conform sequences.

Go into your user settings (OPT+Q). Under the Editing tab, at the bottom right, change the Auto Conform sequence setting to: ASK. Hit OK.

Andy

Andy-

Before I attempt your 2nd to last post...I went to the settings but it already is set to ASK. Also, the box underneath it is checked as well. Am I set up right?

Thank you,

Jon

Yeah, that's correct. But remember, it won't ask to conform if you copy and paste the sequence. What you need to do is grab the 4:3 sequence icon in the browser and drag it into the new 16:9 sequence. Then it should ask.

If however, it doesn't for some odd reason, you can still fix it really easily. Just select the nested sequence and hit CMD+OPT+V for remove attributes. Check any boxes that are available and hit ok. Then proceed to scale the sequence up as per my other post.

Andy

Andy-

Got it...dragging and dropping did the trick. Now I'm in compressor. I have a status bar from Compressor titled "Compressor Processing" and it seems to be cycling through the Frames. It got to the end once and started back from the beginning. I'm not familiar with Compressor. Is this going to stop and some point and give me a file to import into DVD Studio Pro?

(Sorry, I know this is a FCP user group and not Compressor.)

Thanks!

Jon

Thank you so much for your time and your effort.

I found a solution and more info on what has been going on.

The workable solution was to export my 4:3 letterboxed sequence from FCP and import into DVD Studio Pro. On the track setting, I switch it to 16:9 letterbox. It's not perfect but pretty good. And, it's a pretty quick and easy workflow.

The weird thing is that I tried this last week and watched the burned DVD on my Samsung TV from a PS3 and it looked really good. But when I tested it the next day on my other TV using a cheap, upconverting DVD player, the image was super compressed (vertically) so I abandoned this workflow and continued looking for answers. But, after doing some further trouble shooting, I found that the culprit was the cheap DVD player because it looks good on a PS3 and the two computers DVD players. I think the cheap DVD player is doing something internally to adjust for the format of the DVD. Hopefully, this is a rarity and most festivals will be watching on better quality players or in their computers.

When we get into fests, we'll have to go back and re-telecine to correct for color anyway so we'll get the dimensions corrected then too.

Thank you so much for all of your time and effort. It was very helpful!

Best,

Jon