Anamorphic Setup - Final Cut Studio Training

Question

I inadvertedly posted this in the DVD SP forum. I'd like to move it here where it belongs.
I just got my Final Cut Pro Studio a couple weeks ago, had to finish a project that I was doing in FCE and iDVD, and am now reviewing the tutorial on the Final Cut Studio Training DVD.
One of the first steps is to setup the session to "DV-NTSC Anamorphic". Since I had already blown past that 2 week ago, I did not see it this time, nor could I find the correct menu to make that setting for the tutorial. So I just blew by it; realizing that I'd find out sooner or later what the cost would be.
I found out: When doing the Motion segment and importing the final "TrailerLowerThirds" back into FCP, that part is compressed horizontally with black side bars on the right and left.
3 questions:
How do I make that setting if I've been running FCP already?
What does that do to the project, the clips, anything else?
If I were to make this mistake on one of my projects, how would I recover?
So far I've only been making projects in DV-NTSC 2:3 (I guess that's the right way to say it). Any insights would be appreciated.
G5 dual core 2Ghz, 2.5 GB, 160, 300GB & 300GBfw   Mac OS X (10.4.6)   FCE HD, FCSP5.1

Answer 1

My second question was: "What does that do to the project, the clips, anything else?"
The essential thing to bear in mind is that 4:3 and 16:9 anamorphic projects (in the SD world) have the SAME resolution: 720x480 pixels for NTSC, 720x576 for PAL. Because the resolution is the same, but the apparent frame size is different, it can lead to confustion, and it's easy to get it wrong - especially over there in the US where anamorphic broadcasting of SD material never took off, and thus widescreen sets were never mass market before HD.
(The situation here in Europe is different.).
Have a read of this for clarity: http://www.helerab.fi/widescreen/
The anamoprhic easy setup just tells FCP that you are capturing anamorphic material, and that new sequences should be anamorphic by default. You can override these defaults if necessary, but the easy setup just makes it harder to mess up.
The important thing when going to DVD is to keep the workflow anamorphic all the way through: output anamorphic material from FCP, make sure material is transcoded to mpeg (whether through compressor, iDVD or Quicktime) with anamorphic settings intact; and in your DVD authoring application, make sure projects, menus and tracks are created or flagged as 16:9.
The end result is an anamorphic DVD.
Your DVD player has a menu where you tell it what type of TV it's connected to - whether 4:3 or widescreen (and if it's a 4:3 set, how it should handle widescreen material: either letterboxing it or "cropping" it via pan/scan).
I've started noticing in other posts that some people think that if you have anamorphic material you should set your DVD player to 16:9. This is NOT A GOOD IDEA (unless the DVD player is attached to a widescreen TV, in which case you have it set to 16:9 already!) Just set the DVD player once and leave it alone.
Hope these observations help get you started. If you understand what's going on with anamorphic media, you're less likely to make mistakes. Best of luck.