• Marc Krier 2 months ago
    i'm fairly familiar with pixel aspect ratio's (thanks Eugenia!), but have run into a problem.
    Being without my videocamera at an event, I used my Canon photo-camera in video mode. Output is 640x480, 30p (frames/sec), square pixels. As I wanted to add titles, I have imported the clips in Final Cut Express (FCE) and choose for the timeline DV-PAL( 720x576, PAL pixels). FCE upscaled nicely, and after export I received a Quicktime video in 768x576, playing fine on the computer.
    Uploaded to Vimeo without problems (no complaint!), but the result is horizontally squeezed, by the amount of approx. the PAL ratio.
    Is there a solution for this?

    I changed the pixels in Quicktime's movie properties to 800x576 (Unlocking aspect ratio), trying to counterbalance the effect, but then Vimeo displays the video as "undefined".
    Tried also a sequence with NTSC preset, but without success. I am based in Europe.
  • Eugenia Loli-Queru 2 months ago
    Try exporting with the designated way for Quicktime as per tutorials, but uncheck the aspect ratio locking to edit in FCE, and instead export in the native resolution of the video, at 640x480 with 2mbps bitrate. It should work fine.
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  • Marc Krier 2 months ago
    Many thanks for your tip.
    I made a test by defining a new project. I supposed that, when you said "uncheck the aspect ratio locking to edit in FCE", you meant uncheck "Always scale clips to sequence size" in FCE4.
    As Easy set up I choose "Custom" with 30fps.
    I defined 2 sequence presets, one PAL, 25fps, and one NTSC, 30fps. Unchecking "Correct for aspect ratio" in the canvas display menu showed interesting differences.
    The purpose of testing with a PAL and an NTSC sequence was to test removing the stuttering in fast movements, when FCE is scaling 30fps to 25fps, by just dropping some frames.

    In the QT export I used as you said 640x480, 30fps, 3mbps (because fast moves), The result is the movie with a black border all around for the remaining pixels. in the PAL sequence, the stuttering remains (not surprising, the QT movie inspector shows as FPS 30.12). Export from the NTSC sequence yields a correct 29.97 fps, with no stuttering. The pixel aspect ratio is correct in both cases on the Mac!

    Now uploading to vimeo, both tests, was at first disappointing: The result is a "successful" mail message, but a message on the video: "Sorry, there was a problem loading this video". However after some time (several days, or a week) the video appeared correctly!

    Thanks very much for your help, I learned a few things on non-standard video!
  • Eugenia Loli-Queru 2 months ago
    The problem is that you edited in PAL and NTSC aspect ratios. And so even if you exported in VGA at the end, FCE kept the original edited aspect ratio, so it would look either squeezed or letterboxed or whatever.

    To do this correctly, you need to create a custom sequence that has nothing to do with PAL or NTSC. This is a VGA camera, and so your sequence should just be 640x480 and nothing else. If FCE doesn't do that, then you need to use a video editor that's serious.
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  • Marc Krier 2 months ago
    It looks fine for me, the clip in the sequence remains at 640x480 with square pixels, although the sequence definition is NTSC or PAL. It is true that FCE is a bit "unserious", as you you can only define sequences in HDV, PAL or NTSC. But the result is sufficient for me now, and I don't need to earn money with video editing. Otherwise I would go to FCP of course.
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