4.3 - not widescreen, please.

Question

Hello,
Moving from Avid (Pinnacle) to Final Cut.
Enjoying the experience but my project has come out in 16.9, not in my preferred aspect of 4.3.
I now realise that I probably should have set these settings before I started - but is there any way I can shift my project back into 4.3?
It was shot on a DVcam in 4.3, but even the capture clips have the letterbox top and bottom.
Am I doomed to have to restart the whole thing? Am using DV PAL (UK/Europe)
Thanks, Shd

Answer 1

If the clips from the camera are indeed Anamorphic then the Easy Setup as suggested is the correct one.
There is no need to recapture the clips as FCE is a NON-Destuctive editor. That means your clips on the Scratch Disc will never be altered. If they are 16:9 Anamorphic on the Scratch Disc they will always stay that way.
Placing these into a 4:3 Sequence will force FCE to render the clips to conform, not the best move.
When a clip (clips in FCE are NOT the actual media files but file paths back to the real media files stored on your Scratch Disc) is imported/captured into FCE it is what it is.
This is why FCE knows if the clip properties do not match the Sequence it's going into, a message asking to change the Sequence is FCEs way of making the clip and Sequence match. This mostly works fine, that message should alert the user that something is mis-matched. Telling FCE to make the change is only a good idea if you don't know what the Sequence SHOULD be to match the incoming clips.
Please read the tutorial link if you like to shoe horn 16:9 to 4:3:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/faking_it.html
It should provide some interesting ideas.
Al