Hi - if I shoot my footage (on an XM-2), with the widescreen guides switched on, what must I then do in Final Cut Express so that my exported movie is in widescreen format?

Is it simply a matter of using the crop tool and chopping the image down to the guides or are there some settings hiding away somehere that I can select (can't see anything in the manual about this)...

Thanks.

In FCP you can use a filter, Matt, widecreen, and choose the ratio you want. Doesn't FCE have a similar filter?

I may be mistaken but I don't think it does have a filter called 'matt widescreen'. :(

Sorry, I WAS mistaken - there is a widescreen matte filter. Thanks for that.

On to the next part of the question - If I use one of the widescreen filters, how will the footage look when it is played back on a television. I want the footage to play undistorted - with relative black bars at the top and bottom - NOT squashed horizontally nor viertically to make it 'fill' the screen when played on either a widescreen OR standard TV. Thanks.

I believe a widescreen matte filter would just put those black bars at the top and bottom, hence the 'matte' in the name. If this is the case then it will play fine on a normal TV, should be just like what you see in the monitor.

yes it will play back fine on a "normal" 4:3 TV. If you want it to fill a widescreen TV though it does take a bit more work. How are you going to output the video? to tape or DVD? and do you need it to fill the screen on a widescreen tv?

If you do, then to avoid having black bars on top bottom left and right then theres more work to do

I'm going to be burning to DVD. Due to the fact that there are many widescreen formats, when it plays on a widescreen TV I want it to fill the screen horizontally as best it can and put in relative black bars at the top and bottom (same as on a 4:3 TV) ie NO stretching of the image - yuk!

ok. well to make it fit your widescreen TV (you are using PAL system yeah?) then this is what I have done to make it work for me and my widescreen TV. It'll play back with black bars top and bottom on a 4:3 TV but will fill almost all the height of a widescreen TV and all its width.

you need to matte to 1:78 your sequence, export that as a self contained FCP movie. Import it back into FCP. Create a new sequence. Make that sequence Amamorphic (CTRL click from the browser and adjust the seq properties by clicking anamorphic check box. Double click your imported self contained movie and it displays in the viewer. Drag this movie to the Canvas Overwrite option. Then double click on it in the timeline, which displays it in the viewer and then in there change the scale to 126%. render.
Then when expirting out of FCP choose MPEG2 option, and make to slect in options to export as 16x9. Make sure too that when in DVDSP that you state that that track is 16x9. Then do a test burn to make sure you are happy with the scale size and lost resolution

Its not that hard. I had to figuere it all out for myself last week. Goodluck!

Wow - that's quite complicated.

Thanks very much.

Justin