One-of-a-kind 'one-trick-pony' indispensible for iMovie users with anamorphic vision
August 30, 2002 | by Chuck La Tournous
It may seem ironic, but the biggest risk in hanging out on the bleeding edge of technology isn?t getting cut -- it's getting burned.
Take home movie editing, for instance. I jumped on the computer-editing bandwagon back in the 90s, with a long-defunct program called Avid Cinema. (Just don't tell Chris Breen it's dead -- he still stubbornly insists on making it his tool of choice in producing his excellent "Breen's Bungalow" series for Macworld.)
These days, I've been pushing the envelope of what Apple's iMovie can do with a slew of third-party plug-ins from terrific publishers like GeeThree, Virtix and eZedia. What they allow you to do with iMovie -- a free program, no less -- is nothing short of astounding, especially for someone who created his first movie effects with a strip of 8mm film, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a safety pin. (A Star Trek-style "beam out" effect, as I've probably said before.)
Most recently, Virtix came to my rescue when I thought I'd strayed off the bleeding edge and right into a certain creek whose name we won't mention here. You see, I've really grown to love the anamorphic -- or widescreen -- aspect ratio that's worked its way from film into "serious" television. I find the wider image to be a much more natural way of looking at things; the way my eye pans left and right enhances the illusion of "being there" to me and opens up wonderful opportunities for creating drama and focus when framing a scene.
I began experimenting with clips I'd already shot, using Virtix's free Letterbox filter, and was instantly hooked when I letterboxed a scene of my four-year-old describing the collapse of the Twin Towers with a view of the city behind him. Somehow, the change in aspect from square to widescreen gave the clip the impact it deserved.
Almost immediately, I hunted down the setting in my camcorder that lets me shoot in widescreen (so I can frame the shot immediately and don't have to convert it later) and went off on my merry way, shooting footage of our family vacation in Florida.
Here -- if you're still with me -- is where I got burned.
For all its features, iMovie does not yet handle anamorphic video. When it imports from my camcorder, it takes all that nice 16x9 footage and squishes it into standard 4x3. Now that may do wonders for my figure, it's not generally the effect I'm going for.
After some quick research, I found that the only way to restore my widescreen footage (and my not-so-svelte figure) comes from a likely source: the good folks at Virtix.
Their stand-alone 16x9 converter is one of those wonderful one-trick-ponies; it converts video from 4x3 to 16x9 or vice-versa. Converting a clip shot in widescreen, you get just one option -- but that's all you need. The converter neatly restores the correct aspect ratio to your clip. Best of all, it's fast -- a godsend when you've got a lot of footage to convert.
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Before: Flamingos do not need to be stretched vertically. |
After: Our home movie gets that 'big screen' feel. |
There are two options for converting standard 4x3 footage into anamorphic version, and although we couldn't imagine why anyone would want to do this (as opposed to using Virtix's free Letterbox filter), Chris Ryan, president of Virtix set us straight:
"Many people have written us to tell us that they have to make a project with 95% 4:3 footage and 5% 16:9 footage. Many people have also told us that they had to make a project with 5% 4:3 footage and 95% 16:9 footage. The most common reasons for this are the the camera operator accidentally had the camera turned to the wrong setting for a few shots, or the footage was shot by two different people in two different modes, or the editor is dredging up some "file footage" that is in the opposite format."
You can choose to put borders around your clip, or stretch it to fill the entire frame. In our tests, both methods resulted in a noticeable loss of resolution -- something we didn't see in the widescreen conversion.
At $24.99, the 16x9 converter is pricier than we'd like, but for someone set on shooting in widescreen -- and for those of us who jump off that bleeding edge with eyes wide shut -- the Virtix 16x9 converter is worth its weight in uneditable video tape.
The Virtix 16x9 converter is available at the company's website.
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