Hey there!
I have a newbie question for the board...
I am shooting in widescreen and editing in widescreen (Sony Z1P HDV onto Final Cut Studio). I want to export both for DVD burn (on my G5, which is not connected to the web) and to online .flv sites such as YouTube (by transferring my finished files via flash-drive to my online computer and uploading from there).
The problem is, I cannot get Final Cut to output my finished projects into .mov or .avi files without it squashing the widescreen project into 4:3, making it look like a carnival mirror image - or one of those old 1970s-era closing-title shots.
Is there a way of counteracting this and defaulting Final Cut to a widescreen output?
Any and all help will be enormously appreciated.
cheers,
David M.
Oz-based indy director & virgin to this board (be nice, please)
"How tall is King Kong?"
"How tall is King Kong?"
Complicated things:
Since HDV originates as 1440x1080 rather than 1920x1080, the picture has to be stretched out for normal playback. So if you export an HDV timeline out as a full-resolution native quicktime file, you'll get something that is squashed to a 4:3 aspect ratio. This is actually a good thing because it means that Final Cut is not stretching or squashing or otherwise futzing with your original video. But it's also not so great for actual distribution. Here's what you want to do:
Export a full-resolution (squashed) quicktime of your timeline and bring it into Compressor.
From the "setting" menu, choose one of the 16:9 DVD options. You don't need to make any changes to this to make it work.
Also choose one of the "web streaming" options from the setting menu. This one you'll have to tinker with just a little bit. With the web streaming preset selected, go to the "geometry" tab of the inspector and set to "constrain to display aspect" drop-down to 16:9.
Now encode these two videos. Your web streaming video should come out at the proper aspect ratio, but your DVD encode will still be squashed. That is just fine. When you are putting together the DVD, just make sure that the video track is set as 16:9 rather than 4:3.
I hope that solves your problem. Welcome to the confusing world of rectangular pixels.
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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my vodcast on iTunes: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=96931870
and my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
-----------------
Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com
Thanks for that. I have had a great deal of fun (and frustration) over the last few months playing around both with your suggestions and with others I have culled from various online sources.
I am now in control of the whole YouTube situation, able to upload in widescreen, which is good.
I am still having masses of trouble with both iDVD and DVD Studio Pro when it comes to producing a hardcopy of my latest opus.
Neither of them seem to want to produce a disc that plays (properly, in the case of iDVD; or at all, in the case of DVDSP). Can't figure it out.
But thanks for your help getting the YouTube situation sorted out!
Daveman,
"How tall is King Kong?"
"How tall is King Kong?"
