4:3 NTSC project is stretched on the Render page

This is baffling me. I have a project I have set to 4:3 NTSC going for a campy 70s look.

All looks fine in the editing window but on the render page, things get stretched vertically and I cannot figure out why. The render itself is also stretched vertically. I've checked all the settings I can think to check. What stupid thing am I just missing?

Relevant screenshots.

Project Settings

Screenshot 2024-05-11 231524.png (130.09 KiB) Viewed 705 times

Edit Window

Screenshot 2024-05-11 231612.png (184.17 KiB) Viewed 705 times

Render Window

Screenshot 2024-05-11 231633.png (968.54 KiB) Viewed 705 times

What are your Image Scaling settings? It is absolutely possible to render out 4x3 if that's what you want.

It was "Scale entire image to fit" by default. If I change it things get super out of whack now though! Would that affect only the render screen and render?

I *think* I found it. I think the stretched elements were set to NTSC pixels and setting them to "square" seems to fix it...I think.

I think I would approach the entire thing differently.

In today's TV world, I would still want a 1920 x 1080 render at the very least. I would just apply some 4:3 pillar boxing.

The problem is that you've imported a square pixel image into an NTSC AR pixel timeline. The image needs to be stretched to account for the AR difference between the two. Square "appears" correct because there was no AR correction applied to the image within the NTSC timeline. 720X486 square is going to render a 3:2 image not 4:3. Probably best to just choose a 4:3 square ratio and leave NTSC pixels alone.

Good Luck

I wish I understood all that better. I think it's fine. Luckily since I was going for "Old 70s TV commercial" there's a lot of leeway in how it looks.

The problem is that you've imported a square pixel image into an NTSC AR pixel timeline. The image needs to be stretched to account for the AR difference between the two. Square "appears" correct because there was no AR correction applied to the image within the NTSC timeline. 720X486 square is going to render a 3:2 image not 4:3. Probably best to just choose a 4:3 square ratio and leave NTSC pixels alone.

Good Luck

NTSC pixels aren't square they're rectangular. Going to an NTSC aspect ratio from a square AR requires a correction to be made. Exporting 720X486 is only 4:3 (40:29) when exporting with an NTSC aspect ratio (rectangular) pixel. What you're exporting is 3:2 not 4:3. For a square pixel 4:3 image you'd need to export 640X480, 800X600, etc.,

Good Luck

That's super helpful! Thanks! Weirdly now if I set the project to 640x480, the "analog damage" filter greatly distorts all the white on black captions so I'm trying to hunt that down! If I delete and replace the text it's fine but I'm trying to avoid having to manually do that for every caption!

EDIT:
I just went ahead and manually fixed them all as troubleshooting was taking longer than just replacing them.

NTSC pixels aren't square they're rectangular. Going to an NTSC aspect ratio from a square AR requires a correction to be made. Exporting 720X486 is only 4:3 (40:29) when exporting with an NTSC aspect ratio (rectangular) pixel. What you're exporting is 3:2 not 4:3. For a square pixel 4:3 image you'd need to export 640X480, 800X600, etc.,

Good Luck