Please help with this 16:9 headache.
 

We've been trying to figure out this problem for a few days and are at our wits' ends so if anyone can help out it would be much appreciated.

We shot a short with an XL2 in 16:9 mode. The footage looks correct in the viewer, as far as not being distorted or stretched, but the shape looks more square than 16:9. the canvas shows the footage as 16:9 but with black bars at the top and bottom, and the image appears squeezed outwardly. My editor assures me that he captured the footage correctly, except that he had to tick the anamorphic box afterward. When he exports a QT file it looks fine, but when we made a DVD and watched it on a 16:9 TV, the image had black bars on the top and bottom and appeared squeezed out as it does in the canvas.

We have checked the capture settings and the sequence settings and everything appears correct; DV NTSC, anamorphic, 480x720, etc...

We are using FCP HD. Right now my guess is that the footage was not captured correctly, for the sole reason that the clips in the viewer are not widescreen.

Can anybody please help?

TIA

Did you make sure you told DVD Studio Pro (I'm assuming this is what you used) that the file should be 16 x 9? If so, to double check, when you open the VIDEO TS file on your mac, it should open to be 16 x 9.

Hope that helps.

Kevin

Thanks for the quick response Kevin. Yes, we used DVDSP, and it knows it's 16:9. I don't think the problem lies there, because the footage does not look correct in FCP before we export it. This is my first anamorphic 16:9 project, and I don't think the footage should have black bars on it when seen in the canvas. Am I wrong?

Hmm...no it probably shouldn't. My guess is that the sequence settings are 4 x 3. You CAN capture footage and then check the anamorphic box to make it 16 x 9, but if you then edit that footage into a 4x3 sequence, it will automatically add the letterbox.

People get this wrong a lot. When you change your sequence settings in Audio Video Settings, it only affects your NEW sequences. If you had a 4 x 3 sequence and then changed the settings, the seq would not be affected.

Not sure what will happen here...not at my computer...but you might try doing a new 16 x 9 sequence, copying all the old clips from your other sequence and pasting them into the new sequence. It's worth a shot...

Kevin

Javier,

Kevin hit the nail on the head. Your sequence settings are 4:3 and should be 16:9.

Thanks for the advice. We're going to work on it again in a couple of hours and then I'll report back. I have a feeling we've already tried this, but we may as well try it again. I don't think there is a 16:9 sequence setting though, at least not for SD. There is 4:3, and there is 3:2, which is DV. So the setting we're using is 3:2 anamorphic. (This should be 16:9 but FCP doesn't call it that.)

Javier: go to the Final Cut Pro menu and choose Easy Setup. Check the box which says "show all." Now pull the menu down to "DV-NTSC Anamorphic." This will give you all the correct capture, clip and sequence settings. Note however that it will not change any existing sequences, but any new sequences you create will be in this format.

There most certainly is a 16:9 sequence preset in FCP. All I shoot is 16:9. All I use is FCP. The Easy Setup Boyd mentioned is the correct one for DV. Once you do that, just make a new sequence, which will already be 16:9, and cut and paste the clips from the improperly setup sequnce into it.

Dave, you're right. My bad.

Boyd, we didn't use the anamorphic easy preset because our footage was shot in 24p advanced mode. We chose to use the 24p advanced preset instead, thinking it would be easy to add the anamorphic properties later.

My editor fixed it, but we're not sure what happened. We used the suggestions from this discussion and they did not work. After making the new sequence and pasting the clips from the old one, we right-clicked on a clip, chose "remove attributes", and when it opened, the box marked 'distort' was ticked for some reason. We had to go through each clip individually and delete that 'distort' attribute, then everything was fine. I don't know what happened but I appreciate everyone's responses.

This is exactly what happens when you drop a 16:9 clip into a 4:3 sequence, as others have noted. You could have chosen the 24p preset, and just checked the anamorphic 16:9 box in the dialog, then everything would have been fine.

I believe you could have selected all the clips, then remove their attributes and uncheck the distort property instead of doing this separately to each clip. Regardless, I'm glad you got everything fixed.

D'oh! I should've mentioned that. You are the 2nd person I've heard to have that exact problem. It's something about loading footage and then checking anamorphic, that it suddenly checks "distort," too. I don't know what is up with that or when it happens, but a client of mine had the same problem recently and I was as equally stumped then...until he said that setting was checked. Odd...it may be a bug.

Kevin

The problem is that you need to check the anamorphic box BEFORE dropping 16:9 clips into the sequence. When you drop a 16:9 clip into a 4:3 sequence, the program automatically decides to letterbox the clip. Changing the sequence to anamorphic afterwards cannot undo this damage unfortunately. However you can fix it with "remove attributes" or by opening the clip and directly changing the distort property on the motion tab in the browser.

what sucks is that when you readjust the sequence settings it screws up the clips in the sequence. Under each one's motion tab changing the distort from -33% to 0 unsquishes them... can't figure how to do all at once. No render time is the upside...

I made a successful wide screen DVD the other day that had the letter box and looked fine. Captured in Standard NTSC but it all came out 16:9 even on DVD. I figured it can't be a whole lot different than all of the crap you get at the Video store that is supposed to be WS and plays with a letterbox you your WS TV. If I do it the way you guys are talking about, will it eliminated the letterbox?