Logging & Capturing always comes in at 4:3 & Sequence Settings

Question

Hi All,
There is only so much a class on Final Cut could teach me. We have an AJA and I was lead to believe it was the issue, but now I'm not sure. Whenever I capture something I always get the media in 4:3. Its a pain in the butt when you always have to change it in distortion. Does anyone know how in the setup menu to fix this?? Also the sequence settings are usually 3:2 (720 x 480) which is not really Widescreen 16:9 (640 x 360) is there another preset that is better or should I create one?

Answer 1

Don't distort the clips to get ehm to 16:9, simply check the anamorphic box on those items.
All NTSC digital video will either be 720x480 (DV & DV50) or 720x486 (Uncompressed, etc.). The only difference between 4:3 and 16:9 is the pixel aspect ratio. Checking the anamorphic box will tell QuickTime to stretch the image out appropriately, no distorting, no rendering. It's that easy.
Depending on your version of FCP, there may not be a capture preset for anamorphic video, but you can just go into the capture presets in A/V settings and make a new copy of your current preset with anamorphic box checked.
However, it's just as easy to check the box for clips that have already been catpured - you can toggle iit on and off instantaneously. It's a little more complex to do this for clips already in a sequence, but usually a remove attributes after fixiing the aspect ration will do the trick.
Hope this helps -
Max Average