Help with FCP and anamorphic playback

[paulmc]

OK, I am still really confused. I shoot everything with a Canon XL2 in 16:9.

I capture the video and FCP recognizes it just fine as 16:9. My sequence is 4:3 and includes many still images which I then use a letterbox mask to make sure they are cropped to the same aspect ratio. Everything is just fine until I playback the final DVD on my widescreen TV, it's stretched.

Does the sequence have to be 16:9, then the Compressor setting also 16:9 in order for the final output to be squeezed up so it looks correct on my widescreen monitor?

If I use the 16:9 setting on Compressor to make the DVD, it looks stretched and wrong.

The XL2 has a native 960x480 which I understand is then squeezed into the 720x480 format. It seems my final video is always 4:3 and then my TV scaling distorts it.

Help!

 

[evil_santa]

why are you using a 4.3 sequence! keep it all 16.9 and put it to DVD as a 16.9. As it is you need to play your DVD on your TV as 4.3 ( you will have black all round the image) or in Zoom mode ( if you tv has that ) where it zoom the 4.3 image to crop off the top & bottom of the image.

 

[evil_santa]

to add to that, if you view 16.9 on a normal TV it will be anamorphic, ie squashed left to right & everybody will look tall & thin, so what you are exporting from compressor and the QT file look squashed left-right this show be ok on the TV when it stretches it out.

 

[paulmc]

Thanks for the answer. That's what I thought, but I got confused because in FCP, it looks the same whether I am in 4:3 or 16:9. It only gets weird when I view it on the screen and since everything in the DV stream is 720x480 anyway......

Can I make a new sequence in 16:9, copy and paste everything over and have it change the aspect ratio?