[MacDV] Re: Importing Widescreen MP4

[Steve Robertson]

Found a new approach to MPEG Streamclip. I imported that full quality  
MP4 that I made with Handbrake and used MPEG Streamclip to convert it  
to NTSC DV. The quality looks identical to the MP4. And it still  
plays perfectly in Quicktime Player in a widescreen player.

But when I import the NTSC DV version into FCE, it does strange  
things in the Canvas. Screens that are all text are so big you don't  
see all the text. The parts with the widescreen video seem to be more  
widescreen than they really are. I tried changing the easy setup  
between basic and anamorphic, but that didn't seem to make any  
difference.

I guess the next step is to make a few test edits, then export from  
FCE and see how that turns out.

Steve R.


On Jul 7, 2008, at 4:21 PM, sb wrote:

> Ah, I'd forgotten that FCE doesn't come with the mpeg2 license.
>
> Maybe you should think of it in terms of being paid an hourly wage.
> $20 instead of all the xtra work and quality loss of using other  
> tools?
> Also, you said "a client wants..."
> can't you charge the client the $20?
>
>  regards,
>
>  sb
>
>
>
> On Jul 7, 2008, at 1:09 PM, Steve Robertson wrote:
>
>> MPEG Streamclip looks great. If I had to extract video from DVDs  
>> very often, I might justify spending 20 bucks on Apples MPEG 2  
>> Playback Component. But I'm Scottish. I hate to pay that when I  
>> might only use it once!
>>
>> Steve R.
>>
>> On Jul 7, 2008, at 2:06 PM, sb wrote:
>>
>>> Why don't you use MPEG Streamclip, free download, to rip the DVD  
>>> to Quicktime DV?
>>>
>>> Then you can edit in FCE.
>>>
>>> regards,
>>>
>>> sb
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jul 7, 2008, at 10:23 AM, Steve Robertson wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Guys and Gals,
>>>>
>>>> A client wants me to do some minor editing on an existing DVD.  
>>>> This is not a commercial, protected DVD, even though the seven  
>>>> minute video it contains is very "cinematic" and professional.  
>>>> It's widescreen and 24 fps.
>>>>
>>>> I used the latest version of Handbrake to extract the video. I  
>>>> used the default settings, which use H.264 to create an MP4  
>>>> file. This extracted video looks beautiful when played using  
>>>> Quicktime. The widescreen video exactly fills a widescreen player.
>>>>
>>>> Then I tried to import this MP4 into FCE. Didn't work, and the  
>>>> error file was very cryptic. So I switched to iMovie HD. This  
>>>> app imported the MP4, but did not recognize the widescreen  
>>>> format. The imported file has black bars at top, bottom and  
>>>> right side.
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone know the secret to importing widescreen MP4 into a  
>>>> good editing program and preserving the widescreen format all  
>>>> the way to export of the edited version?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Steve R.
>>>
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