SOLVED: Aspect Ratio in Edit page viewer is wrong

Hi all,

I have my first feature grade starting this week and i’ve setup my project but i’m having an issue with the aspect ratio of the footage on the edit page.

The footage comes from 2 cameras: a RED (3240x2700 - Cinemascope) and a BMCC 4K (3840x2160 - Cinemascope). The project is set at resolution 3240x2700 (RED’s footage’s resolution) and Cinemascope pixel ratio.



I have set input sizing to “scale entire image to fit”- And output sizing to “stretch frame to all corners” in the “image scaling” panel. I’ve also set my monitor output to 1920x1600 to be able to monitor the signal of my 4k footage via my mini monitor BoB.



I first imported all the footage. I then went on each clip in the media pool and selected “clip Attributes” and changed the Pixel Aspect Ratio from Square to Cinemascope. I then imported each Reel in a separate timeline via an XML from Premiere.

When i review the timelines in the colour page, everything looking fine. The 2:35 aspect ration show fine. And the clips from the BMCC get cropped after being scaled to fit.



But when i review the timeline from the edit page (to fix sizing issues on the BMCC and reframes), both viewers (showing the offline reference and the timeline respectively) show the wrong aspect ratio.



And yes i have ticked the box “Resize image in viewer for correct aspect ratio” in the UI settings - but nothing happens. It shows a picture that’s almost square, with the footage squeezed in it.



When i export the footage though, it looks the same as on my reference monitor... Thoughts? Ideas? HELP!

My config:

Quad-core nmpro dual D700 - 32GB Ram - DR 14.3.0.014 (very latest stable build) - BM Mini Monitor plugged via HDMI onto a Dell U2516D - macOS High Sierra 10.13.4

My guess is that the problem relies on the image scaling setting, when you ask it to scale entire image to fit, it will fit the whole image inside your set timeline resolution.

So if I understand your issue correctly, you'll have to select "scale full frame with crop" as an image scaling setting, so it will crop the parts of the image that exceed the timeline's aspect ratio.

If I'm following this correctly, and unlikely that I am...

You seem to have three resolutions or more and a couple of aspect ratios at play. What is your target output resolution/ AR, and when you invoke "Cinemascope", are you hoping for anamorphic output?

3840x2160 is HD 16:9 (1.78), your RED 3240x2700 is 1.2:1 -- which would appear to be almost square, certainly more so than 1.33. A long way from 2.35.

There are several settings to watch for... at least one is scaling to match the timeline, and you are pretty much completely sure to run into a lot of issues with non-square preview renditions.

jPo, CSI

Thanks Guys - you both helped quite a bit actually. I have gone through the whole project settings again and now i think i got it fixed.

Here's how:

1/ I changed the project's Main Settings to the following: from 3240x2700 to 3240x1355 (yes, the timeline is actually in 2:39 in the end, not 2:35)) and square pixel.
- It turns out, the main timeline needs to be in square pixel as the de-squeeze happens when i changed the "clip Attributes" - That already fixed a few bits.

2/ Input scaling: Scale entire image to fit
Output Scaling: For 1920x803 (again to fit the 2:39 aspect ratio and still allow monitoring in HD via mini-monitor).) - Square pixels - Scale entire image to fit.

3/ No more need for output blanking, so I reset that which now has also removed black bars above and below.

Thanks again to all!