User Guide

Chapter 3 Combining Standard and High Definition Video 55
For broadcast in the UK, 16:9 images are often cropped to 14:9 and letterboxed within
a 4:3 frame (for standard definition PAL televisions). Because a 14:9 image has a less
severe letterbox (that is, smaller black bars at the top and the bottom of the frame),
some viewers find this less objectionable.
In Final Cut Pro, you can scale the entire HD movie by nesting and scaling it into an
SD sequence. In this case, the sides of the scaled HD footage are cropped by the
dimensions of the SD frame. You will have to render the whole sequence before you
output. For more information about nesting a sequence, see the Final Cut Pro 5
User Manual, Volume II, Chapter 23, “Sequence to Sequence Editing.”
Pan and Scan
The pan and scan method also crops 16:9 movies within a 4:3 frame, but the movie can
be cropped on a shot-by-shot basis. This is a more time-consuming approach to
converting 16:9 to 4:3, but it is often necessary when the original widescreen movie
was not shot with 4:3 in mind. This is often the case with older widescreen movies shot
prior to mass video rental and distribution, since the only viewing venue was in movie
theaters capable of showing the complete widescreen images.
In some complex scenes with multiple characters or centers of visual activity, an
artificial camera move (a pan) can be introduced to recenter the widescreen action
within the 4:3 frame. Unless this is done subtly, this can be more of a distraction than
anything else.
Note: The pan and scan method does not necessarily refer to panning during the
transfer, but rather the fact that each frame may be cropped differently.
16:9 to 4:3
pan and scan