Making 4:3 look good for both 4:3 and 16:9 screens

Question

Hi,
Up until this point I have lived my life in a pleasant 4:3 world. I shot 4:3 footage, edited 4:3 in FCP, sent 4:3 to DVDSP, checked my work on a 4:3 television, and mailed 4:3 DVDs to my customers.
My understanding from playing around with a friend's 16:9 TV, is that the TV owner could push a button to view 4:3 content with bars on the right and left (I think from other contexts this must be called pillarboxing).
Then I brought my baby's videos to my parents' house.
They say the camera adds 10 lbs -- how about 50! I guess if all consumers got used to watching television this way, it would be a huge win for the anti-anorexia people.
My parents could see nothing wrong with the video that was being stretched out to fit their 16:9 television. They watch all their movies this way. They didn't want me to fiddle with the remote because, "they might not be able to get it back the way it was."
I've read the thread "Need help on 16:9" very carefully.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=510426&tstart=0
Unfortunately, it's still a bit too far over my head. From reading that thread, I've come to understand that "letterboxing" is the black bars put above and below 16:9 footage when it is displayed on a 4:3 screen. "Pillarboxing" is adding black bars to the right and left of 4:3 footage so that it displays with the correct aspect ratio on a 16:9 screen.
Unfortunately the term "anamorphic" in the various contexts is lost on me. I know it's a special lens that you use to shoot widescreen footage on 35mm film, but what it means in the DVD context is a bit lost on me.
I want to know:
1. Is it possible to take my 4:3 footage and process it somehow in FCP and DVDSP to make DVDs that will "just work" on both 4:3 televisions and widescreen TVs? That is, I want the image to have the correct aspect ratio on both boxes without the user having to do anything to their TV. (I assume this would mean displaying as-is on 4:3 TV's and pillarboxing automatically on 16:9 TVs)
2. If it is possible, can someone point me to some references on how to accomplish this? Or at least some references that would help me learn enough to choose the right workflow to do this?
Doing a "search" or a "Google Search" for 16:9 tutorial, leads to more hits than is useful and lots of vendors trying to sell me products.
I'm not against buying & reading a book or tutorial, but there is so much out there that I need a push in the right direction first.
3. Looking at the other thread my impression is that if I want to do this, I'd have to find some way to make FCP add the black bars to pillarbox my 4:3 data, then tell DVDSP I've got 16:9 footage. I have no idea how to actually accomplish this (settings, etc.) however.
Whew! And all this is just SD stuff I believe. I still haven't touched HD, but I believe those 16:9 TV's are made for HD but will still display my SD DVDs. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that.
Thanks so much! These forums have been so helpful. Even though I only occasionally post I read many answers to questions I've had that other people have too.
--Beth

Answer 1

Hi,
Thank you very much for the reply. Once I'm finished I'll post all my notes so others can benefit. Right now though, I've been having problems fighting compressor all day. I think I broke my computer
I'm currently downloading an update, but that's not going to finish for the next 6 hrs. (I have a very slow network connection, and I tend to only update my programs between projects unless I run into a serious issue.)
Here are the issues I've had and some of the solutions I've found:
* = I found a solution
*1. Originally my compressor .m2v file would not import into DVDSP -- DVDSP would unexpectedly quit every time I even clicked on the file, I didn't even click "import" and it would quit. I renamed my file to no avail (it had a '/' in it, compressor's default file naming turned 16:9 to 16/9). I read on the DVDSP forum that the way around this was to drag my file directly into DVDSP. That worked.
2. I accidently told FCP to "render all" in that 16:9 timeline before sending it to compressor. I did it because I wanted to see how things looked before sending to compressor. Unfortunately, I don't know how to tell FCP to "un-render" the files. Is there a way to do this? I seem to recall that there weren't any files in on FCP's scratch disk when I looked, but I can't check right now (see #4) Problem #2 may be the cause of problem #3, but I can't check that until later either.
3. The disk I created using the compressor-rendered-from-FCP files appeared to have interlace issues. i.e. during times of quick, high-contrast horizontal motion, there were every-other-line streaks left behind. The problem is most easily noticed on computer monitors. There is a small amount of it on the original DVD, but not nearly as much as in the DVD created with compressor. Do you have any recommendations for settings, or is this potentially caused by my rendering in FCP first before going to compressor?
4. The big issue: After using compressor, finder now quits when I click on 2 of my 4 disk drives. (I saved .m2v files on two different disks due to the DVDSP problems in #1. I thought perhaps the first time my file itself was corrupted.) I did searches for this issue and learned that many people have it, and the solution seems to be to right-click on the offending file and choose open with -> other -> quicktime, check the box for all files of this type. Unfortunately, I can't even get finder to get that far.
I tried another solution using one of my disks that still works, I re-named a .mov file to .m2v, and then told that one to open with -> other -> quicktime, check the box for all files of that type. Unfortunately that didn't appear to work as Disk 1 and Disk 4 still cause finder to quit and re-start itself. (Various iterations of reboot, trash finder.plist, etc. thrown in for good measure.)
I am currently downloading these patches:
Apple Qmaster Update 2.0.1
Cinema Tools Update 3.0.3
Compressor Update 2.0.1
Pro Applications Update 2005-02 1.0
Soundtrack Pro Update 1.0.3
I don't even know how many of those I really need. I already have FCP 5.0.4 and DVDSP 4.0.3. That should finish sometime tomorrow, but if the patches don't work I could use some advice. I guess I could go into the Unix side of things and manually delete all the .m2v files, but I've been hesitant to do that because they took so long to create in the first place.
Is this finder/compressor/DVDSP problem a known issue that is fixed with some of the above patches?
Thanks again,
--Beth