FCP scaling/aspect ratio motion algorithms make good video soft?

I have tried everything, but converting 16:9 footage into a 4:3 timeline in Final Cut Pro makes the letter-boxed video soft. I have, of course, double checked against NTSC external broadcast monitor. Original 16:9 clips look great, when converted to letter box 4:3 timeline they go soft. ( I believe it is FCP ineptness in handling Pixel Aspect Ratio conversion from 1.2 to 0.9, but I would love to be wrong at this point) I know FCP has poor scaling algorithms to begin with, but this is a very obnoxious issue when capturing clips widescreen from the deck, but having your final output needing to be edited and taped off in letter-boxed format for SD broadcast.
I really want to avoid losing any quality when going from 16:9 to 4:3 letter-box, so is there a plugin that can be used to handle the rescaling that does a better job than just FCP by itself? These are pretty complicated edits, (television show) so avoiding having to hop over to After Effects for a second huge render would be preferable. I have exhausted Google looking into this, lol, anyone have any ideas?
Thanks All,
Dustin Hoye
Editor
Sour Squirrel Studios, llc.

Patrick,
Thanks for the quick response. My motion filtering quality is set to "Best". After looking over the link you provided ( I will examine more thoroughly, but saw your response and wanted to re-post to answer your question.) I also tried switching to "Fastest (linear)" just to see if it would eliminate the softness/possible double lines, but of course, no luck. (Also, just to clarify, this is working all in SD.)
I would consider using Compressor or (After Effects for that matter), but I am editing using the letter box conversion because we occasionally are mixing in past regular 4:3 footage with the letter boxed 16:9. (the reg 4:3 being a minority of the clips) It is easier just to matte those 4:3 clips to match the converted 16:9 since there are fewer of them. If I fed the timeline to compressor then those clips (the reg. 4:3) would get interpreted incorrectly. I suppose I could just leave them out and re-insert them later, but depending on the number of them and how they are used that could be quite a work-around. It would be great if I could just get FCP to interpret the conversion internally (i.e. plugin) w/out causing quality loss. Sigh.
Everything else is set to 100%; editing 10- bit uncompressed, 10-bit material in High Precision YUV. I have tried multiple combinations of capture, codecs and vid processing options, but all seem to have the same result.
Thanks Again,
Dustin

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FCP export aspect ratio issue

Hi everyone!
I would like to export HD footage with FCP using quicktime conversion. My original footage is 1920 x 1080 and I would like to to convert to 640 x 272. When I export I enter the desired size and tick "preserve aspect ratio". However the footage gets distorted. Can anyone help? Thanks, Jo

What happens if you open the clip in QT player, then go into the movie properties window (cmd-J) then under the presentation tab change the aperture display mode to "production"?
About QuickTime Aperture Display Modes
QuickTime 7.1 and later supports four aperture display modes that allow you to properly display video with nonsquare pixels (such as DV video) in QuickTime Player and other applications that support these modes. The four aperture display modes in QuickTime are:
- Classic
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FCP export to "QuickTime Movie" distorts aspect ratio of all text, displays video correctly.

Hi you all,
My name is Alexander, I'm from Belgium.
I'm working on Final Cut Pro 6.0.6, on a MacBook Pro with a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, running version 10.7.2 of Mac OS X (Lion).
I'm editing a 'making of' of a Flemish feature film. I shot this 35 minute documentary short with my own Canon HDV-camcorder (XH-A1). The Final Cut Pro-project is stored on an external hard drive (1 TB LaCie Minimus).
I've been doing exports to "QuickTime Movie" for years now, without any problems, but since a week or two, FCP started messing up the titles over the video - and the titles only. Their aspect ratio is messed up once exported, but they look just fine in the FCP Timeline (in Viewer, I can verify that the aspect ratio of the titles is always "0"). I'm trying to export this to "HDV - 720p25".
Here's a comparison between the two:
As you can see: the MOV has the titles' aspect ratio all weird, the upper one partly covering the lower one. All titles and text in the docu come out like this, but the video (and audio) is exported correctly.
Any ideas on how to solve this very annoying problem?
Many thanks!!
Alexander

Hi Studio X,
Thank you for your quick reply.
The producers of the film want to upload this making of-documentary on YouTube. Therefore, I need to give them a high-quality-mov with the least possible Megabites. My film has a 35 minute running time.
So I figured: Let's start with the 'smallest' high-quality FCP-export to begin with (HDV-720p25), and throw that one in Compressor, in order to end up with a 'small' but good looking H.264-MOV for YouTube.
But for some reason, those "HDV-720p25"-exports mess up the titles. And I can't figure out why.
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A slightly different problem with aspect ratio and DVD Maker

I am converting VHS movies to DVD. All are 4:3. Using Microsoft Movie Maker, I create the desired final result, a WMV file that plays perfectly--aspect ratio, sound, whatever.
The problem comes when I use DVD Maker to create the DVD. The picture gets squeezed pretty much to a square (from the 4:3 original). DVD Maker correctly shows 4:3 as the desired ratio.
Ironically (considering the solution offered in several similar posts), when I convert that WMV file to AVI, and _then_ use DVD Maker, all appears fine. My only complaint at this point is that the result is "window-boxed." That is, there is large black space
on all four sides.
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Hi,
There’s similar thread discuss the DVD maker for 4:3 or 16:9 you can refer:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itpromedia/thread/cd5edb7b-a4dd-43c9-ae95-20ac5692b2c6
And I find someone has submit it as a bug to our website, if our development team recognize it was a bug, they will fix it on next update.
Thank you for your understanding.
Regards,
Leo Huang
TechNet Subscriber Support
If you are
TechNet Subscription user and have any feedback on our support quality, please send your feedback
here.
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TechNet Community Support

Aspect Ratio in Comp is good, looks bad though

Hello, I'm working in Final Cut Pro (mac). I'm exporting my timeline sequence as 1440x1080i Quicktime Movie using the Apple Intermediate Codec (1.3 Pixel Aspect Ratio). Now I launch After Effects, import this file, from the Bin I drag this file on top of the New Composition Button so it creates a Composition to the same settings as my source file. I go to the Composition Dropdown Menu, click Comp Settings and confirm that I'm at 1080i with a 1.3 pixel Aspect ratio, the lock to 4:3 button is not checked.
Why in After Effects does my video look like Full Screen 4:3 video?
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I have a feeling this is a long shot, can you see any problems in my workflow? Is there a known issue? Any ideas?
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Well, your AE thing is easily explained: You are not using the pixel aspect ratio correction for the comp viewer, hence it will look incorrect. As to why it is messed up once you export, I have no clue. I'm using my Mac and in particular FCP way too rarely to be of any help here. I could dare a guess and say there's some Advanced Option in the CoDec somewhere that's responsible for it or an interpretation setting in FCP, but it's really nothing more than a stab in the dark.
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Aspect ratio for stills in a video - Pre 11

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I show you step by step how to keyframe motion path pan & zooms in my books, if you're interested.
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Incorrect aspect ratio when importing MPEG-4 Video file to project

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I think I figured it out for myself:
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FCP: Motion Distort Aspect Ratio -33.33?

Good morning,
I recently exported two different sequences from FCP. Both films were exported using ‘QuickTime Movie’ and ‘Current Settings’.
One of the films came out letter-boxed and the other did not.
In investigating this I found the only difference in the settings of two films seems to be that under the 'Distort' field in 'Motion' tab of the FCP Viewer, the Aspect Ratio for the letter-boxed video was set at '-33.33' while for the full-screen the Aspect Ratio was set for '0'. When I changed the -33.33 to 0 I got the full-screen, non-letter-boxed image I wanted.
Both films are also played with QuickTime player using ‘Conform Aperture to: Clean’ under the ‘Presentation’ tab of [Command]-J.
Why was the Aspect Ratio for these clips set at -33.33? Since I didn't set this, it must have been an automatic setting.
I'm sure I'm missing something here.
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BurntMonkey

Studio X,
Thanks again. 'Squeeze Mode' is the DVX100B's solution to fitting a 16:9 aspect on a 4:3 chip. If I understand correctly when in the mode the DVX basically animorphically squeezes the footage onto the chip. Then when it is handled in post the footage is 'stretched' and you are left with a 16:9 aspect ratio.
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My question is still 'Why?' When I reset the aspect ration back to '0' I get the full-screen, 16:9 image that I was hoping for in the first place. But I'm wondering when this will come back to haunt me. I have burned a DVD using the exported sequence so everything seems to be OK.
Thanks for your help in understanding this.
Cheers,
John

Motion project aspect ratios.

The Problem:
When opening a motion project in FCP, the aspect ratio is completely changed and never looks right even when both settings are exactly the same.
The Details:
Motion Ratio= Project: NTSC Broadcast SD 720 X 486 29.97fps NTSC D1/DV Anamorphic
Final Cut= NTSC DV (3:2) 720 X 480 anamorphic 29.97fps
PLEASE HELP!

Well one problem I see is that you are using different setting for Motion (720x486 anamorphic) and FCP (DV 720x480 anamorphic). That will cause you other, ugly problems so you should make them identical.
When you say it didn't work, did you change the browser clip or the timeline clip? And you added the checkmark? That should do it.

"Preserve Aspect Ratio" Bug w/ DV Export

Hi,
I searched around and found no mention of this behavior, so figured I'd post what I discovered. There is a subtle bug in QuickTime when you convert to DV and check "Preserve Aspect Ratio" in the Size options. It's intimately connected with how QuickTime scales DV for display on screen.
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The problem occurs when you need to export some video to DV that's not a standard aspect ratio (like the 2:1 clips I was converting). When you check the "Preserve Aspect Ratio" box, QuickTime scales your video to the 640x480 display area, keeping the original aspect ratio like it's supposed to. BUT it then proceeds to take the full 654x480 frame and encode it to DV. You end up with a very thin black border on the left and right, and ironically the aspect ratio you wanted to preserve is ever so slightly squished!
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I've seen the border in Final Cut. This is good to know - thanks.

Losing 16x9 aspect ratio after compression

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- I make sure I click, "correct for pixel aspect ratio" in the viewer. I pull up the Geometry tab in the Inspector and there I get confused.
For preserving the 16x9, what do I set the following in the geometry tab?
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100% of Source? or one of the other options in the pulldown menu?
Output image inset:
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Version 3.0.5
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I work 99% in DV anamorphic and all my Applications are set this way. It bothers me however that I lose my anamorphic aspect ratio when I export from FCP to Quicktime movie. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?
No, you're not doing anything wrong - this is a quirk in the way that FCP writes anamorphic QT movies when using the DV codecs.
As you've discovered, the flag is not recognized by QT Player unless you export via QT Conversion and either set the display size manually or, in QT 7.1.0 or higher, select 16:9 output in your Movie Settings.
Sorry if that's no help...

FCP scaling/aspect ratio motion algorithms make good video soft?

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