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.

[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!