Aspect ratio NIGHTMARE

rtmills wrote on 7/8/2009, 6:09 PM

I can only hope someone here can help me. I have video, 6 hours of it, shot on a DVC Pro camera (broadcast quality, I work at a TV station) in 16:9. We pulled it into Final Cut Pro then exported it as an AVI in widescreen format. When I play the file, it's there in all its anamorphic glory. When I pull it in VMS, it squishes the video back into 4:3... DESPITE the fact that I have the project set to DV Widescreen, as well as the preview window. I even tried rendering some of the video (again using the widescreen setting) and it's STILL 4:3, with black bars top, bottom and both sides, and squished video in the middle.

I can only hope and pray that I'm just missing something completely stupid.

PLEASE can anyone help me??

To summarize, both source and the AVI rendered by Final Cut are 16:9, but VMS will only display'/render in 4:3.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 7/8/2009, 7:52 PM

Sounds like the camera actually recorded in 4:3 masked to 16:9 rather than actual anamorphic 16:9.

Bring up pan/crop for the clip, right-mouse-button click in the cropping frame, and choose 'match output aspect'. That will fix the aspect problem, but you'll lose resolution since you'll only be using 360 pixels of the source instead of 480.

edit:

Added thought, maybe the camera recorded it fine but when you rendered in FCP you created a 4:3 file with the black bars above and below.

Is there any reason you didn't import the video directly into Vegas to begin with?

musicvid10 wrote on 7/8/2009, 7:56 PM

Taking your word that your project settings are exactly the same as your media;

Right-click on the preview screen, check the option "Simulate device aspect."
Does that help?

Otherwise, post your complete file details using MediaInfo, and / or upload a sample somewhere . . .

rtmills wrote on 7/9/2009, 9:00 AM

"Simulate device aspect" didn't help, alas. I will post MediaInfo details and a sample of the original AVI when I get home from work later today. Thank you so much for responding.

rtmills wrote on 7/9/2009, 9:04 AM

Shortly after posting I messed with Pan & Crop and a combination of stretching to fill frame and unchecking maintain aspect ratio seemed to work. However, I am concerned about loss of resolution.

I'll check with our operations manager on the camera settings. Pretty sure they shoot native 16:9.

FCP-rendered file is DEFINITELY 16:9, I even watched it full screen to be sure, on both a Mac and a PC.

Did I mention that FCP is on a MAC and my Sony FMS is on a PC?

BTW we also tried exporting to .mov rather than .avi but never could get 16:9 at all in that format.

Thank you so much for responding, the help function in FMS was completely useless in this particular case.

amendegw wrote on 7/9/2009, 12:21 PM

Here's something to try... Click Here. Scroll down to the post by jetdv and follow his instructions.

...Jerry

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 7/9/2009, 12:25 PM

Have you 'matched media settings' under 'properties' (the legendary yellow icon)? You should direct the yellow icon to the original media.

Eugenia wrote on 7/9/2009, 1:40 PM

AVI does not have anamorphic and progressiveness flags, and so when you exported from FCP in anamorphic rather than square pixels, Vegas can NOT know that the file was 16:9. You have two options:

1. Re-Export in square pixels resolution from FCP.
2. Right-click on the file in the Vegas media bin, select properties, and set the aspect ratio there, in one of its tabs. THEN setup the project properties using the yellow icon that Ivan mentioned. THEN, pull the file in the timeline.

This will work.

Chienworks wrote on 7/9/2009, 2:39 PM

"AVI does not have anamorphic and progressiveness flags"

Are you sure about that? DV can be anamorphic and/or progressive, and it is stored in an AVI container. I can render various AVI formats as either progressive or interlaced and with a variety of PAR values. This information is stored in the file and read by whatever opens/plays it.

musicvid10 wrote on 7/9/2009, 3:19 PM

AVI does not have anamorphic and progressiveness flags,

As is so often the case, it is the codec, not the container. A common mistake, but one that needs to be corrected here.

As Kelly correctly points out, DV-AVI supports PAR and flags. As an example, Huffy does not.

We pulled it into Final Cut Pro then exported it as an AVI in widescreen format. When I play the file, it's there in all its anamorphic glory.

This would seem to indicate that these AVI files support PAR and flags.

However, until the OP provides that essential information about the codecs and other params, it is anybody's guess why it's not reflected in the Vegas preview appearance.

I'm guessing it's a matter of not setting the project properties to match, since the OP hasn't provided that information either. HOWEVER, my guess is no better than anyone else's, at this point.

Eugenia wrote on 7/9/2009, 3:58 PM

>As is so often the case, it is the codec, not the container.

Not what Sony told me.

rtmills wrote on 7/9/2009, 5:08 PM

Eugenia NAILED it:

<quote>
AVI does not have anamorphic and progressiveness flags, and so when you exported from FCP in anamorphic rather than square pixels, Vegas can NOT know that the file was 16:9. You have two options:</q>

Worked perfectly, 1,000 blessings upon thee!

I just went to the source and changed the pixel aspect ratio to 1.2121 on each clip. Voila!

PEACE and thanks the BEST freaking forum I've ever joined I will certainly try to pay it forward. Lots of replies and ideas, really MUCH appreciated!

(8-{)
rtmills

Eugenia wrote on 7/9/2009, 5:25 PM

What you are telling us here is that you forgot to input the right aspect ratio in the original export. So by that account, that was your error, not FCP's or Vegas'. ;-)

cdubwright wrote on 8/24/2009, 5:51 PM

I had similar problem when I converted a video from 480 to 720 high. The video got squished, and the video I placed over it for multicamera was 16:9, and when I switched to the original video, the orig was narrower and actually squished. ICK. Thought there might be some trick in pan and crop to stretch back to full frame.

So far, as the video is now rendering again, from the preview, it LOOKS like the video has stretched back to 16:9, just by doing this as you suggested. Right click on the event clip > Switches > uncheck "Maintain Aspect Ratio" box. I'd click and unclick and could see the video stretch and squish. Will report back if it did NOT work and what else I did to solve it. I was so busy syncing two video and audio tracks and looking for exact places to show each track, I didn't notice until I was finished. DARN. Well, hope this solves it. Will come back and let you know what happened and how I solved if it didn't. certainly a lot of info in this thread. Thanks!