Another SD downconversion question

[Vincent Oliver]

Originally Posted by Darren Ruddock

Hi again,

Regarding the Exporting as a Quicktime Self Contained movie, I can't seem to get the thing to export in 16:9! It only exports onto the desktop in 4:3.

Any ideas????

Export the file as Square Pixels, or open the 4:3 aspect movie in QuickTime Pro and set the width to 133% and save the file. The movie will now play back as 16:9 every time.

[Matt Davis]

Originally Posted by Darren Ruddock

Hi again,

Regarding the Exporting as a Quicktime Self Contained movie, I can't seem to get the thing to export in 16:9! It only exports onto the desktop in 4:3.

If I open the self contained movie up in fcp it plays in 16:9. I remember having this problem before which is probably why I declined the self contained route!

Any ideas????

Right, firstly: If we're talking PAL SD, even though we view it in 16:9, it still is, actually, really deep down, a 4:3 squished image which your display device stretches out to fill. There's no more pixels in a 16:9 anamorphic video than there is in a 4:3 video - just a different shape.

Older versions of QuickTime and FCP (sorry, can't be exact, my system is up to date* and doesn't do this any more) would 'do the right thing' even if it was the wrong thing, and QT would wrongly report the vertical pixel count assuming the horizontal pixel count and aspect ratio were square 4:3. That little bug is now squashed and Compressor just got on with things because it was just QT trying to be helpful. The actual data wasn't changed.

But hold the phone. If you're editing XDCAM-EX footage, the pixels ARE square. There is no such thing as 'Anamorphic' in these cases. The only situation would be with HDV 1080 footage which is actually 1440x1080, not 1920x1080.

In the years I've been around FCP people, I've heard talk of sync issues, occasional render-not-updated issues, blips of the 'media not found' red screen and longer processing times with exporting to Compressor direct from FCP - all for the privilege of processing effects in ProRes or something. As I invariably work to deadlines, I go with the reliable separate movie rather than wring the last few drops of goodness that will be lost in downconvert or compression anyway. That's just my workflow. (shrug)

And it frees up my Mac so I can actually do more editing whilst that self contained movie compresses in the background. Great when you need to do multiple versions as the deadline looms.

So, I'd have to say with 6.0.3, 10.5.6 and QT 7.6 I'm not having any apect ratio wobblies - and that includes PAL SD.

* And when I say 'up to date' I mean as far as is stable and I've not updated to the latest software update yet. That would be courting disaster!