Joining in a slew of similar entries... Help, FCP vidders!

[cherry]

I'm having trouble with exporting my Premieres vid. (My awesomeness, let me know you it!) I'm running Final Cut Pro, and I have a system that usually works pretty well, using Compressor, but it is flummoxed by my aspect ratio!

My Premieres vid is in ultra wide screen -- 2.5:1, rather than 16:9, and I cannot figure out any export technique that doesn't make it horridly squishy and distorted and unwatchable. I did my .avi export by trimming the bars from my clipping program and manually resizing it to source dimensions, but I cannot do this with the high quality export!

I've tried close to twenty combinations of import/export/encodes, and I am completely at a loss. Any guidance at all would be greatly appreciated.

Comments

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I've given it a try, but I keep ending up with squishiness with letterboxing on the sides and top.

Aspect ratios -- my old nemesis. For most vids, I have a way of using Compressor that is one-step awesomeness, but it is apparently distrustful of ultra wide movie format. I have tried to cobble something together with tickyboxes and creating my own letterboxing (at least in part) to maintain ratio, but my system is telling me it's going to be about 20 hours before I know if it's worked.

Vidding: face-stabbing-est hobby since 2007.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

So sorry to hear that! Did you try posting in mac_vidding_101?

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

I think -- I think that I have somehow achieved my goal. I fake letterboxed it out to 16:9 and did some weird cropping during export, but the video itself appears to be about the right size on my screen. It *looks* correct on my end, and I am just hoping that VVC tech does not make frustrated faces at me.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

They're normally very helpful if a file seems weird, so I wouldn't worry overmuch. Glad you got it to look right! If you have a minute, maybe you can post about what you did so we can learn from it? I say this as a fellow aspect ratio sufferer. (:

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

I can try to do that -- I don't know that it would really be helpful, but at least it would help me remember what I did, should it ever come up again.

I find Compressor's pretty straight forward for MPEG-2 conversion, and I think I might have recently discovered the key to getting aspect ratios right in divx. Or, at least manipulating whatever went wrong so that it looks right.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I seem to have the opposite problem! I can never get Compressor to work right for aspect ratios, but I have no issues with DivX at all.

I have a feeling this goes back to my sequence settings in FCP. I suspect I've been doing *that* wrong the entire time.

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

... There are sequence settings in FCP?

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I'm really sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but yes (http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_sequence_settings.html). More info here (http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1091299), and of course in the FCP manual if you can bear it.

[cherryice.livejournal.com]

Lalalalalalalala.

Okay, actually, this isn't too bad. I thought you meant FCP itself had settings in a submenu somewhere I was supposed to set every time I vidded an at half past the hour and on dates divisible by three and seven, or something. Some of these things, I already do, just from trial and error of ticking boxes.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I gather that you are meant to set sequence settings for each vid (provided that they actually should be different -- like if your last vid was 4:3 and your current one is 16:9, or your last one was standard definition and you're now working in HD). I have never done it until recently, and now I'm wondering if that's why my aspect ratios are always fucked up.

Meep.