Need help using blu-ray digital download file

[alba17.livejournal.com]

I hope someone can help me with this. I've searched and searched for answers but I'm not coming up with an obvious solution. For the first time, I'm trying to vid using the digital download that comes with commercial DVDs and Blu-rays. I'm making a Captain America vid with clips from both movies. I converted the files to .mov (I use Final Cut Express) and made clips with MPEG Streamclip. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to handle the weird frame size for the second movie (from Blu-Ray). It's 1280 x 532. I converted the Blu-Ray clips to 720 x 480, the size of the first movie, but they're still a different size from the first movie when I put them into FCE. When converted, they take up the whole frame, while the Cap 1 clips are letterboxed. In the past, when I've had different size sources, I just manually adjusted the frame in the Canvas and it wasn't a big deal, but I can't seem to do that with this. If I scale the Cap 1 clips up, it cuts off too much material and I just don't see how it would work.

I guess I have two basic problems:

1) How can I make the two sources match in frame size?

2) How do you handle Blu-Ray digital files with this weird frame size? Even I were making a vid with just Cap 2 clips, the natural size is so short and wide. It only takes up the middle third of the screen. The other weird thing is when I check the size of these clips in Quicktime, it says it's 720 x 480, even though I exported them to an HD frame size.

I'm so confused and frustrated.

Comments

[sc-fossil.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there is a "newer" way but when I made a vid about six years ago with a mix of 16:9 and 4:3 footage, I trimmed it after it was finished with the cropping boxes in MPEG Streamclip. They're at the bottom part of the main screen. I had to play with the percentages to get it right so the frames didn't "jump" from wide screen to regular tv aspect, which I found annoying. :)

http://www.video-converter-mac.org/imm/p2.png

Where it says cropping at the bottom above the PRESETS block is what I used, changing the numbers, rendering and giving it a look. I had to adjust it maybe three times before I got the result I liked.

Someone will hopefully have a spiffy way to do it with some of the newer programs that's quick and easy. But in the end, MPEG did work.

I've never used blu-ray so this may end up being worthless info!

Good luck.

[alba17.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the info! I've never tried to crop with MPEG Streamclip. So, did you crop off the black letter boxing? Do you manually do it for every clip that doesn't fill the frame? I guess I could try that. I just feel like so many people are making Captain America vids, there must be an easier way. Don't know whether they're just using torrents or what.

Normally I'd just rip the DVD, but suddenly they're not packaging DVDs with Blu Rays, you just get a digital copy, so that's why I was trying to use that. For Cap 1, I have a DVD, which I ripped.

[sc-fossil.livejournal.com]

I cropped the entire vid after I finished it. You can see the result if you like. It's here: http://www.4shared.com/video/kDjnnOS9/OutThereSomewhere_final_.html

What might be different for you is that Captain America is a fast paced big action movie. I'm not sure how much you'll "lose" of the sides and top went you crop. What I would do is make a test vid of a dozen clips of various sizes, skip the music for now, and render it. Crop it with MPEG and watch it. See what you get. I'm all for experimenting! I cropped off the letter boxing so that everything was even. When you watch it, it's still letterboxed on most media players by black.


Mine is a combination of 70s footage and 2000s footage.

Yeah since my fandom, The Professionals, is from the 70s we didn't have blu-rays until this year. And not all the series are done yet. I don't use blu-rays so I'm clueless about them.

A lot of vidders actually have professsional programs as opposed to some of us, like me, who just use an old laptop and VideoStudio. I can't afford an $700 program for vidding so I make due. And lots of experience too. In my older fandom a few of the vidders did video work for a living so their vids were always amazing.

[rhoboat.livejournal.com]

It looks like your Cap 2 source is square pixels whereas your Cap 1 source is NOT square pixels.

This might help to explain what makes 720x480 so tricky for vidders: http://vidtech.info/AspectsOfAspectRatios

Not sure how you'd do it with your software, but I'd suggest trying to convert your DVD source so that it's with square pixels in a "movie scope" aspect ratio as described in the link above. Hope this helps!

[alba17.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Thank you. That site looks incredibly informative - I didn't know about it. OMG, what are square pixels...anyway, will read up on this at that link. If they just hadn't stopped shipping DVDs with Blu Rays, this wouldn't be a problem.

[alba17.livejournal.com]

Okay, I've read through the link now and wow, this is EXACTLY what I needed. I'm so, so grateful to you! What a fantastic resource.

[sc-fossil.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I can fix my own things but its really difficult to explain it to somebody unless they're sitting next to you so you can show them. It took me a couple of months to work 0ut on my own how to fix the aspect ratios on vids. I'm still surprised how often aspect ratios are off on vids I see and most people don't even notice.

Love your vids, BTW. You do awesome work.

[alba17.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought I was doing aspect ratio right (generally speaking) until I read that link! Eye opening.