Footage Given was a 4x3 picture in a 16x9 format

[fartheststar]

Hi,

I have an unusual issue, and I've been using FCP for a long time.

Normally I am handed footage that's either:
1) Letterboxed
2) Full frame 4x3
3) Full Frame 16x9 either SD or HD

My client handed me SD 4x3 footage in a 16x9 format (see pic). It came off of a DVD - and when we reviewed the footage together on my TV, it had this issue.

The image on it is 4x3, therefore there are black bars on top, bottom, and on the sides of their footage. I mentioned it to the client. See attachment for how it looks. Note: I put a grey matte over most of the image on purpose for privacy reasons on this forum (that was intentional)

Now that I've cut the project, the client is upset that there are black bars around the image completely, and thinks they gave me footage that was full frame 4x3.

I tried putting the image in a 4x3 timeline, but as you can guess, it's even further letterboxed - so it's actually smaller.

I've asked for the source footage if available (so footage before she put it on DVD), but I'm not sure it is. .

Anything else I can do - I thought about increasing the size by 10% in Final Cut?

I can't think of anything else. PS: I captured the DVD footage with MPEG stremclip (DV NTSC setting, 100% quality).

 

[acearchie]

Haven't got final cut handy but if you double click the clip and go to the distort menu using a combination of this and the scale option you should be able to get the footage to fit within a 4:3 timeline.

Alternatively scale up the footage in a 4:3 timeline and crop off the black bars.

If this works then copy the clip Apple+C and then using Option+V you can paste the attributes to all the other clips.

In the future I would recommend always getting the footage to fit nicely within the timeline before you start the edit!

 

[wonderspark]

Does the DVD play with a widescreen image, or is it always a box of video inside black? I've seen some footage display incorrectly when settings on the DVD player don't match up, so if there are any playback options you can check, it might shed some light.

That footage looks like definite 4x3, so I'd say you need to work in 4x3 timeline. They must have burned the DVD as widescreen by accident, with 4x3 footage.

Assuming there is no possibility of getting the original footage (that was used to create the DVD), your only option seems to be scaling it up to fit the intended screen, which seems to be 4x3. Unfortunately, quality is going to suffer, but without that original footage, you're stuck.

 

[fartheststar]

Thanks you two.

Yes, it's 4x3 footage on a 16x9 image. Checked it in 3 players I use often, and yes, it's not great.

Client happened to find the original footage - I don't know what that means as I haven't seen it. I hope it's better, otherwise, as you said, there will be quality loss.

Just as another question because the original footage is likely (almost certainly) going to have a different timecode on it (due to the fact that I ripped the current stuff off of DVD with mpeg streamclip)

I know how to online when you're using low quality files to edit and then update to the 'HD' versions, but is there a way to transpose timecodes for my edits if the timecode starts and ends at a different time (assuming 29.97 as a base for both).

Rick

 

[wonderspark]

I have always been able to reassign timecode to any clip I'm using (Adobe Premiere Pro) so hopefully, you can do the same in FCP. In Premiere, you just open clip from the bin, choose a frame, and select File>Timecode, where you can set that point as zero, or make the first frame of the clip zero. If you choose a midpoint as zero, the preceding frames are in the 23:59:59 range, as you'd expect. I've only played with FCP for a few minutes, and it looked the same as Premiere, so maybe it's as simple as that.

If not, I think it depends on how you ripped that DVD footage. If you ripped it all as one clip, and used that single captured file as a massive "original footage" file, you could just create an identical clip with the actual original footage, and replace file as you normally would. If the clips were frame-accurately identical, the job you already finished would be updated and complete. If you worked with multiple clips via multiple rips, you could do the same as above with each clip.

 

[fartheststar]

Wonderspark: Looked into it and yes, there seems to be an option. I'll have to read up on it to make best use of it. Thank you so much - appreciate your post.

Just as an update, I'm meeting the client on Friday - the files are in mkv and wmv format. I have the tools to convert them, but I'm just really hoping the quality is ok.