Blackmagic Forum

From time to time I'm digitizing PAL Digital Betacam tapes with my UltraStudio Recorder 3G and Blackmagic Media Express in ProRes HQ, checking (and sometimes repairing) the mov files in Resolve, exporting them again as ProRes HQ mov, having set "Bypass re-encode when possible" in order to keep the image quality.

Until Resolve Studio 18.6.6, the edit page viewer and the exported mov looked correct:


Since Resolve Studio 19 (tested in 19.1 and 19.1.1) the image gets black borders (because being cropped) and looks a bit blurred (unfortunately also the exported mov):


It occurs on old and new footage. I didn't change any File/Timeline/Project Settings:
mov: PAR 16:9
Timeline: 720x576 PAL 16:9 (16:9 Anamorphic, Center crop with no resizing, Monitor: HD 1080i 50)
Project: 1920 x 1080 HD (Square) - as I often reimport and edit Topaz-scaled HD versions of the PAL files

Now I'm back at Resolve Studio 18.6.6 (where I don't have this problem), hoping for this issue to be solved until I need version 19 again.

Having analyzed the mov file (created with Blackmagic Media Express) with MediaInfo, the problem seems to be the "Clean aperture width" of 703 pixels, which lets Resolve to crop the image (9 pixels on each side).

I've found two workarounds:

Installing Resolve 18 in a virtual machine in Parallels.

Or using a Hex Editor like ImHex to edit the clap atom of each mov file. When setting each byte to 0, the "Clean aperture width" is being ignored by MediaInfo and Resolve.