Widescreen weirdness

Widetrack wrote on 7/29/2005, 8:01 AM

I need help.

I’m editing a widescreen project consisting of both DV footage and a bunch of stills.

The footage was shot in widescreen in two sessions: one I shot on a Canon XL-1 and another was shot by a crew in a studio on a Beta SP camera (model unknown).

Both the stills and the video footage were all edited in separate widescreen projects. For the stills, I set the “Use output ratio” parameter in the Pan/Crop dialog to make them widescreen.

In the Vegas Preview window, all the stills and the footage shot with XL1 look like correctly-proportioned widescreen. With the XL1 footage, this happens regardless of whether I set the Pan/Crop ratio in to Source or Output ratio. Looks the same either way.

However, the Beta footage looks like "squeezed" anamorphic widescreen: tall thin images. If I set Pan/Crop to “source” ratio, I see this in a 4:3 frame with bars on the sides. If I set it to “Output” ratio, I get squeezed images in a 16:9 frame.

Is this going to be a problem when I render for delivery?

Whatever the reason for the different looks in the preview window, my bottom line question is: can I determine how all this stuff these will finally look without going through all the renders and printing to tape?

I appreciate any help.

Comments

Liam_Vegas wrote on 7/29/2005, 8:24 AM

However, the Beta footage looks like "squeezed" anamorphic widescreen: tall thin images. If I set Pan/Crop to “source” ratio, I see this in a 4:3 frame with bars on the sides. If I set it to “Output” ratio, I get squeezed images in a 16:9 frame.

Have you tried overriding the media properties for the Beta SP clips? It sounds like the properties are set to regular 4:3 Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) and they need to be set to the widescreen PAR.

Bottom line is if it looks weird in your preview window... it'll still look weird after rendering it.

Widetrack wrote on 7/29/2005, 8:37 AM

just looked and found that all the Beta media properties were set to 4:3. I changed them to DV widescreen and they look ok.

why would this happen? did I set something wrong transferring footage from tape to Vegas?

Saved from delivering an inconsistent project, but now I have to re-render eight separate pieces.

Sure wish the boys in Madison would fix this memory problem in rendering.

thanx for the suggestion.

Liam_Vegas wrote on 7/29/2005, 8:42 PM

This is a common issue.... I'm not sure of the reason why but it happens a lot. It may very well be just that truly the DV AVI format (especially on a tape) does not really care exactly how a frame is built up. In many cases a widescreen image might be created in the camera using an anamorphic lens. Using this lens the camera "fakes" a widescreen image onto a 4:3 CCD chip (using every pixel on the chip) by "spreading out" the widescreen image. The data as recorded on the tape would appear to be a 4:3 image as far as the bits-on-the-tape are concerned. Therefore once it has been captured... the file appears to be in 4:3 format. Hence the need for you to manually switch the ratio for each clip.

farss wrote on 7/30/2005, 12:58 AM

The bits on the tape as far as the image goes are the same for 4:3 or 16:9. What they represent is different be it 4:3 or 16:9. Now in theory if it's shot with a true 16:9 camera then a falg is set saying it's 16:9. Stick a anamorphic converter on a 4:3 camera and there's no way that flag will be set. However more often that not in my experience the flag doesn't end up in the AVI file. This isn't Vegas's fault, happens just as much in FCP from what I hear, I suspect the problem lies in the VCRs, I've never had output from the J30 decks set the flag.
In any case it's a trivial matter to fix with a mouse click. I guess if it's your first 16:9 project then it's easy enough to overlook, moral to the story. If you're working with 16:9 check all your media after capture. If you're shooting 16:9 include a near full screen circle in the slate, that can save a lot of confusion later on.
Bob.

Widetrack wrote on 7/30/2005, 10:01 AM

thanks guys. I appreciate the advice.

Gallingly, this is not my first 16:9 project. In fact it's a re-working of a project I took to DVD a while ago. (with Vegas 5) All that was supposed to be different was to add a bunch of talking head clips and shorten the overall length.

Cutting my beloved content was tough enough, but then there came the can't-render-more-than-8 minutes-at-a-time-if-there's-too-many-stills-and-reboot-between-each-render problem that took way too much time and bandwidth. (and I'm finding that even going with 8-min segments sometimes hangs things up.)

The conflicting Media properties thing was just one kink I hadn't come across before.

And even though I got a new 2.8gHz P4 with a Gig of RAM so things would go smoother, I still have to render to RAM to see anything with any FX or fades (and there's precious little RAM available with V6 loaded) How much RAM do I need to preview a crossfade smoothly? Will 2 GB do it, or will that still put me behind the curve?

Is it worth the setup effort to network render with my old 1.75gHz machine?

Anyway, Thanks again guys. You're proving again that this is about the best forum around.

WT