[MacDV] Wide Screen Production

[Ric Perrott]

On Friday, February 7, 2003, at 01:27  AM, David Thrasher wrote:

>
> My Canon Elura II MC camcorder has a feature where it can shoot in a 
> wide screen mode. According to the manual it is anamorphic and it 
> appears that the aspect ratio when it is stretched out to normal 
> proportions is supposed to work on the new wide screen televisions. 
> I'm not ready to use this feature yet but I did have a few questions 
> that perhaps somebody might have the answers for:
>
> Is there any plug-in's available for iMovie that would take that 
> anamorphic image and convert it to a wide screen letterbox format?
>
> Is the aspect ratio the same or similar to any of the standard motion 
> picture wide screen ratios? (Panavision, Cinemascope, etc.)
>
> Is there any such thing as a "pan and scan" plug-in or utility that 
> would allow you to stretch out the image to normal proportions and 
> selectively crop it to fit a standard television screen (4:3, I > think)?
>
> Even if I don't use it for any serious productions this does look like 
> it would be fun to do something with.
>
> -Dave

You can use the Virtix 16x9 Converter to take the anamorphic video and 
format it as 1.78:1 letterbox.

http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=15167&db=mac

The aspect ratio will be the same as HDTV (1.78:1 or 16x9) You cannot 
shoot 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 anamorphic with consumer grade DV cameras.

However you can shoot your footage normally 4:3 and use a standard 
letterbox plug-in like the one that comes in iMovie3 to format the 
footage to any aspect ratio you want.

A better idea though is to use FCP to edit the anamorphic footage and 
then use DVD Studio Pro to flag the DVD as anamorphic. That way anyone 
with a widescreen TV will see the full anamorphic image while everyone 
else can use the In-player letterboxing to see a "widescreen letterbox 
image"

And don't use any Pan&Scan. Either shoot in 16:9 or 4:3. Bad things 
happen when you try to retrofit one to the other,

-------------------------------
Ric Perrott
Writer, Poet, Pot-Stirrer
Visit http://www.ricperrott.com