HD to SD authoring question

[Brian Sargent]

Well, I am moving from shooting in the field to shooting myself in the foot in edit. I am trying to put my reel together -shot and edited in a 720 24pn timeline in FCP 5 and now I want to produce a DVD that will retain the 16:9 aspect ratio of my project on a regular old 4:3 TV.

I exported a self contained QT file and imported that into Compressor w/aspect ratio set to 16:9 and imported that into DVDStudio Pro, built my project and exported using a 16:9 aspect ratio but that didn't work. So I tried exporting from compressor in a 4:3 ratio. Still no luck. I know I have to convert to 4:3 sometime, but when?

I read on some edit site last night that I have to make a new DV-NTSC sequence in my 720p FCP timeline and nest my project in there before exporting it to Compressor in order to do what I want, but that hasn't worked for me either. I know I must be overlooking something fairly simple here, but I'm darned if I know what it is...

[Mike Schrengohst]

Under Preferences:General:
SD DVD Menus Tracks, menus and slideshows:
16:9 Letterbox

Also
Simulator:
Playback Output:SD
16:9

And:
Encoding:
MPEG SD:
Aspect: 16:9

And when you run a simulation you may have to select 16:9
Using these settings should produce a 16:9 DVD that will play
full-screen in a 16:9 display and Letterbox in a 4:3 TV.....
Most of my clients seem to run DVD's from a computer
and progressive HVX footage formatted 16:9 looks fantastic......

[Douglas Villalba]

Deleted my previous answer. Just make sure that your track is set to 16:9 in the inspector.

[Sam Jankis]

For letterbox:
Open up your 720 timeline, select all, copy, then open up your 4:3 timeline, paste, render, then output.

Anamorphic 16:9 isn't compatible with all DVD players (in my experience), so I make everything letterbox.

[Mike Schrengohst]

You are right....
On short projects I usually make a 4:3 and a 16:9....
But as time goes on the majority of Tv's will be
LCD, plasma etc 16:9.....

[Brian Sargent]

Thanks guys.

Not sure why exactly, but out of 3 different dvd players, none of them would display my 16:9 letterbox formatted disk in anything other than 4:3.

I was attempting to follow sam's advice and make a new sequence w/DV NTSC 4:3 setting, but I neglected to choose the dv-ntsc 48khz 24p setting from the dropdown, which prevented me from importing those clips into that new seqeunce in the timeline.

Not sure if it's a menu setting that needs to be adjusted in each of those players, or if stamped dvds from an authoring facility behave diffrently from the ones I can burn, but I was pulling my hair out because on my computer the disk would play in 16:9!!

Anyhow, I think I'm clear that I have to band those black lines in FCP as you said and keep the rest of the project 4:3 throughout compressor and FCSP.

[Mike Schrengohst]

Most DVD players will display 16:9 material as letterbox....
even my cheap $39 Walmart special will???
Most of my clients use DVD running off of their computers and they all will display 16:9.....

If coming from 720 24pN - try dropping your show in a DVCPRO 50 24p timeline....the finished DVD will be much cleaner than going into a DV timeline....

[Brian Sargent]

Ha, I think the units I tried were remainders from 5 years ago- one Panasonic and a Sony. The Toshiba player is only a year old, a real crappy VHS/DVD combo unit that I up and ripped out of our rack today. What a hunk a junk.
Walmart here I come.

Thanks for the DVCPro50 suggestion. My client is my boss (hey, who's ain't), so I need to impress. Thanks again.

Brian

[Shawn Kessler]

Does anyone know how to charge for this like say weddings?


thanks in advanced
shawn