I was working on some motion graphics for a DVD menu in Final Cut Studio and ran into this problem. I’ve encountered it before but played by chance. Not this time. Here’s the flaw with Apple Motion. 
When working with HD media that will eventually be dumped to a 16×9 Pan Scan menu the guides don’t give you an accurate representation of what it will look like on a 4×3 TV screen. If you don’t know this, DVD Studio Pro allows you to set your menu to “16×9 Pan Scan” mode which will automatically crop the image to 4×3 framing on 4×3 TV’s. On 16×9 TV’s the image is displayed in it’s entirety. It’s a great feature when working in High Def. But since 100% of my current deliverables are in SD letterbox - and most of my customers will be viewing on a standard TV, I need to make sure that my composition fits in a 4×3 frame. To do this, I need guides in motion that match 4×3 aspect ration at the resolution of 1920×1080.
Here’s the solution.
It only took a couple of minutes in Photoshop and was not difficult to do at all. In CS2 I created a new document with the HD 1920×1080 preset with guides. I drew a few boxes using the guides and aligned the layers using the background layer, the box layer and the “align by horizontal centers.” I Added some text to show “action safe” and “title safe” areas. Saved as a flattened PSD and imported it into a motion layer. 
Once it’s in motion you need to change the layer’s overlay mode to “screen” which will remove all of the black and BOOM! you have 4×3 guides for a 16×9 HD document with 1920×1080 resolution.Once you make your composition you can send it to DVD Studio Pro, set the Menu to 16×9 Pan Scan, and marvel at the beauty of thoughtful design. This is also helpful if you’re working with HD content such as an interview that will be showed on SD projector screens, TV’s, etc.
4×3 HD Guides at 1920×1080 Screened so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel!
Comment if you’ve found this useful!
