Widescreen looks zoomed in on tv

Question

I've created a film in FCE 4. It wasn't filmed in widescreen, but changed to it in FCE on the timeline properties. I've exported>quicktime movie>not self-contained. Open the file in Quicktime Pro>window>show movie properties>video track, selected to preserve aspect ratio, set pixels to 853x480.
On a standard tv it looks the way I want it to, with slight black lines on top and bottom. On a widescreen, the picture fills the whole screen but cuts portions off as well. Like it's zoomed in. It wasn't my tv, but i'm pretty sure the settings on the tv weren't set to be zoomed in. It seemed like a problem with aspect ratio or an error when it was sent to iDVD and then burned. I'm not sure how to fix this problem. What ratio is necessary to keep all the footage on the screen?

Answer 1

I'm watching via dvd burned through iDVD 09. The settings in iDVD when imported were set to 16:9 widescreen.
Was the original iDVD movie 16:9, letterboxed, or 4:3 aspect ratio? All of these formats are encoded to the DVD in a 720x480 data matrix no matter which form their display may take. Therefore, it is necessary to khow if the original content should be imported for editing as a 4:3 (no anamophic flag) or 16:9 (with anamorphic flag) for proper editing and further processing as this flag (or lack thereof) should also be passed on for other software to know how to process the file. (E.g., if being sent back to iDVD after editing for re-burning, should the anamorphic flag be added or omitted? If being played in the QT Player, should it use the current size setting for playback or the anamorphic flag for playback? Etc., etc., etc.
I'm not familiar with the difference between "current size" and "anamorphic" pixel aspect ratio.
these are the settings that tell a particular application or device how to display your movie. You don't really have to know anything about them as long as you don't do anything to prevent their proper use. Knowing how they are set and if they are properly set would help in knowing if your file is properly set and the TV setting is performing a zoom or if your messing with the dimensions zoomed the content during editing and the flag caused a second zoom during a subsequent encoding process.
All I really know is that posted a question on how to get my video burned to widescreen via iDVD and was sent this link. http://www.fcpbook.com/Video9.html. I followed the steps.
No, your original question seemed to be asking why a "widescreen file looks zoomed on tv?" Secondly, your reference is either out of date (assumes current applications don't recognize/use the anamorphic flag when present) or assumes your original source file does not contain an anamorphic flag (which what I have been determining from the start here). Further, this web page only describes how to prepare content for burning if your original source file has or can be re-scaled to anamorphic dimensions to allow older versions of iDVD to burn the content as an anamorphic DVD which does not actually increase its quality. If editing is not required, then the quickest and best way to re-burn the disc is to simply to image the original disc and burn as many new copies as you may want as often as you may require.
The original film content is 4:3 full screen.
Aha.. Now we are finally getting somewhere. If the original movie is full screen, then it should be captured or imported to FCE using one of the "non-anamorphic" easy settings. (I.e., one of the settings that does not say anamorphic or HD.) Otherwise the content is automatically captured/converted for editing in your default compression format (or have to be re-rendered if "drop imported" either for editing/previewing or prior to output). A full screen or letterboxed file should be processed as "Full Screen" content. On you 4:3 TV it will display as a either a full screen movie or as letterboxed content just as the original content did and display the same on an HD TV in the "Full Screen" and (usually) in an "auto aspect" mode. Some HDTVs also have modes that will spread the width of you movie to fit the widescreen width but not increase the height. Some will do this by evenly widening the display across the entire screen or allow to display the central are at near true aspect ration and increasingly widen the display proportionally toward the edges. You can normally spot these settings as the people and objects appear shorter and fatter than normal. In a zoomed mode object/people aspects remain normal but the height of the screen is usually expanded to fill the vertical screen (or expand vertical deflaction but add a caption dedicated area below the screen) with the width being expanded in the same proportion which as you noted, effectively crops the display width. Still other HD TVs may have additional, fixed display aspects (e.g., 16:9 and/or 14:9) which also disregard the settings of the input signal.