[MacDV] Importing Widescreen MP4

[Steve Robertson]

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.