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rawdawg

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 7, 2009
550
111
Brooklyn
I have a film I made awhile back. It is on film and the aspect ratio is 1.85:1 (35mm academy).

I edited on AVID and then later on FCP. During this process there was a small offset, it's taken years and I can't go back through the steps to make anything perfect. This might not even matter but the exact size of my completed film when I crop out all the black matting is: 709x346 pixels. A very arbitrary number to me since I'm now used to working with the standard and consistent dimensions that video offers.

I want to put this film online. Preferably I've learned h.264 in a flash wrapper would offer the best quality and compatibility. To avoid letterboxing I was planning on outputing a ProRes resized version to then bring into Adobe Media Encoder to do the H.264 encoding.

Should I use a standard widescreen 16:9 for my size and settle with a little letterboxing?

Or should I either output a 1.85:1 (film academy) crop through compressor (in the size/dimension window) or change my sequence settings in FCP to output my very specific 709x346? Having done tests with these options it appears by outputting 709x436 to make a tight crop with no black around my frame a red line appeared on the right side of my frame. I have no idea what I did wrong.

In any case I'm concerned about playback compatibility if I use something other than 16:9 since that has now become a standard. i.e. would there be stretching in any cases if people watched my video on their iPhone or in other situations?

I imagine 1.85:1 is common but since 16:9 has become such a standard should even that be letterboxed in 16:9? Are Custom dimensions safe?
 
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