Need 640 x 480 with black edges

[freebirdbat]

Humbly before your brilliant feet I drag my weakened, blood-soaked corpse.

I have a slew of videos, all of varying frame-rates, compressions and size, including some PAL format and some HUGE misshapen files and I need to convert them all to NTSC 640 x 480, 29.97 fps Quick Time movies with thin black bars on the right and left sides.

I apologize for the naive question, I am obviously quite the novice, but is there by any chance a simple, step by step, practical set of actions that I can apply to every single clip that will yield those results?

It seems that every video I attempt to wrangle turns out differently once exported to Quick Time, some incorrectly sized, some with skipping audio, some far bigger than the original file.

I have tried the path the manual set me on (and a number of similar paths based on online manuals) and am lost in the woods. Help me, O wise FCP sage! The blood veins in my forehead depend on thee!

 

[arjen92]

I'm neither brilliant in this (and english), but what I think you should do is import your clip in the timeline of fcp (you do have fcp, don't you), make sure the timeline is NTSC 640x480, then make it like you wint in the canvas (your black bars and stuff), then export it, don't use current settings, but do custom. Then you type in your dimensions (640X480) and choose what kind of compression you want (beneath, you will choose NTSC).

I hope this helps, I'm not sure. It's only what I do in sparetime. So I'm no pro.

 

[MrLatte23]

Using Final Cut Studio?

You mentioned "...FCP sage" so hopefully YOU have Final Cut Studio.

Compressor would probably be best for converting multiple clips. In it you can create and save a template "setting" that should produce the same results no matter what type of file you plug into it. You will have to tinker a bit the fine-tune it, and once you figure out the magic settings you can save them and apply them onto multiple clips. To get the black bars you'd probably need to apply a Letterbox filter in the Filters part of the Inspector, where you'd also determine the other parameters (Geometry) you mentioned.

And since you're transcoding potentially compressed footage choosing a less compressed codec (depending on your available storage space) would help lessen further degrading the footage. ProRes, Apple Intermediate Codec are good if you have Final Cut Studio 2.