wide screen vs standard on the viewer and canvas

[nathalia]

hi I am editing my film on final cut express
and some of my footage or clips is randomly standard so it fills up the whole viewer and canvas box and some is in wide screen format with the black lines top and bottom
and i swear I filmed this footage at same time and had no time to change the setting
and on its item properties the clips seem to be the same
why would some come out wide screen and some not
so when i view whole sequence it jumps from wide screen to standard
i am so confused wahh
can anyone help me pleaseee
many thank yous

 

[BenB]

Final Cut has no way to mysteriously convert things on it's own. If it's widescreen, that's how it was recorded.

On the clips in the Browser, right click on them, go to Item Properties > Format. Check the aspect ratio. Confirm that those showing in wide screen actually have a 16:9 aspect ratio, and the others are 4:3. It sounds like some got recorded wide screen, and some didn't.

No worries, just adjust the Scale setting of the wide screen clips in the Viewer's Motion tab up until the clip fills the whole 4:3 screen of your Sequence.

 

[nathalia]

thank you for reply but
On the item properties format thing
There is no option for aspect ration, I have final cut express HD 3.5.1
On the list it says such things as size, pixel aspect and anamorphic
But all the same for all my clips these settings are the SAME but still on the viewer do they look different also the scale percentage is the same!
Thanks
Also the clips were definitely filmed with same setting like the clip the difference of the clips are one second and some time the clip is the second part of one whole recording.
?

 

[BenB]

So what exactly are the settings? Can you post a screen shot for us? I'm lost as there is no way for the software to magically make these changes to your clips. I still doubt they were all recorded with the exact same settings.

Here's what we need to trouble shoot this properly:
Mac model
How much RAM
Hard Drive set up
Info on clip formats
What camera in what recording mode did you shoot the footage
Sequence settings

And a screen shot of a 4:3 clip and a 16:9 clip side by side, perhaps load one into the Viewer, one into the Canvas.

At this point, I'd have to have more information to figure this out. Because it honestly makes no sense if all footage was shot exactly the same on the same physical camera.