aspect ratio issues in FCP 4.1
 

I've got footage I've captured direct to disk with DV Rack that I am now editing in FCP 4.1. The footage looks fine in the viewer and I could swear my sequence was displaying nicely too. But something has happened. Don't know what, but it looks like my image is being stretched a little too much - like it is now 2:1 instead of 16:9. The canvas shows strips along the top and bottom of the frame.

I've working with 25p PAL footage (720x576). I've got the anamorphic check box enabled. I've set the canvas to display square pixels. And it does not look right.

Help! (Please?)

Select a clip in the browser and check its Item Properties. These must match the sequence settings or you will have problems. If they don't match FCP will want to render the sequence. Sorry, I have no experience with DV Rack or PAL footage so I can't be more specific. But these problems usually occur when you drop a clip into a sequence with settings that don't match. Isn't DV Rac a PC product? How did you get the clips onto your Mac? Perhaps they are not being properly identified because of this.

DV Rack is indeed PC-only, but it records in your choice of four standard file formats (AVI Type 1 and Type 2, Canopus, and QuickTime). So while the program runs only on PCs, its output can be used on any platform that recognizes these video formats. Many of our customers record to an external drive, and then plug that drive into their preferred system for editing.

The program does not alter the dv feed from the camera in any way. It simply records it straight to the designated hard drive.