16:9 / 4:3 problem

wrrn wrote on 6/3/2004, 9:47 AM

Greetings -

I'm working on a project which was shot in 4:3 mode on a couple of DV camcorders. However some of the video was shot erroneously in 16:9 mode. (someone forgot to check settings!) I pulled my video into Vegas4 as NTSC DV (720x480, 29.970 fps). Needless to say, the 16:9 footage is squished in appearance.

What are my options to blend the footage seamlessly?
I would prefer to make it all 4:3, but am open to converting it all to 16:9.

Any help appreciated.
Regards
warren

Comments

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 6/3/2004, 10:19 AM

I personally am unaware of a way to make 16:9 into 4:3 without cutting off the edges and expanding the "image" and pixelating the video. The other option would be to do something inbetween, I've seen some where they put just a small amout of Black on the top and bottom, not 16:9 but not 4:3, mind you this looks a little odd so I would stear clear of it.

Mind you I may just be unaware and there is a good way of doing it but my guess is say hello to 16:9

But look on the up side, you could just render the 4:3 with a black box on top and bottom and move the video underneath them so that you can get what you want in that area through out the shot. Just a thought :-)

Hope this helped some.

wrrn wrote on 6/3/2004, 9:16 PM

Thanks for that.

>>> But look on the up side, you could just render the 4:3 with a black box on top and bottom and move the video underneath them so that you can get what you want in that area through out the shot. Just a thought :-)

If I render at 4:3, will the 16:9 footage still look squished after output? Maybe I'm not fully understanding.

warren

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 6/3/2004, 9:28 PM

Please explain squished.

Cheno wrote on 6/3/2004, 10:20 PM

with 2D track motion you can uncheck "lock aspect ratio", adjust your height accordinly to restore the proper framing (unsquished) - check "lock aspect ratio" and zoom in on your frame. Render at Best setting and you should be okay. Zoom in won't pixelate much if you're not more than 20% of the frame in.

mike

John_Cline wrote on 6/3/2004, 10:28 PM

In case Vegas isn't recognizing the 16x9 clips correctly, right click on each 16x9 clip in the Media Pool, select "Properties", under "Pixel Aspect Ratio" set them to "1.2121 (NTSC DV Widescreen)." This will at least get all the 16x9 stuff to display correctly letterboxed in a 4x3 project.

Now you can go to the "Event Pan/Crop" setting for each 4x3 clip on the timeline and select "16:9 Widescreen TV aspect ratio" However, you will need to change the "Position: Height" from the default 368 to 360. Now all of your clips will be in the 16x9 aspect ratio and will display as letterboxed on a 4x3 TV in a 4x3 project. The clips that were 16x9 to begin with are essentially unchanged, the 4x3 clips will have the top 60 lines and the bottom 60 lines cropped off to make them letterboxed. Not an ideal solution, but at least you can freely interchange your 16x9 clips and your 4x3 clips. Alternately, if you are going to make a 16x9 DVD, just change the project settings to "NTSC DV Widescreen (720x480, 29.970 fps)" and render to MPEG2 as a widescreen project. When viewed on a 16.9 set, it will be correct, when viewed on a 4x3 set, the DVD player will do the letterboxing for you.

I suppose you could also take the 16x9 footage and use the pan/crop preset for 4x3 screen to blow up the center portion to fill the screen vertically, however, this wouild require that Vegas enlarges the video quite a bit and the footage would likely look pretty bad. It will probably look better if you make the project 16x9 and convert the 4x3 footage to 16x9 by letterboxing it as I described above.

John

wrrn wrote on 6/3/2004, 10:58 PM

Thanks All. I will try these suggestions tomorrow.

As far as my definition of "squished," I actually messed up by saying this because the video previewed from the media pool shows the footage squeezed in at the sides, so a persons face will look tall and skinny. However, when placed on the timeline, the video looks normal, yet letterboxed (black bars on top and bottom).

warren

Phil_A wrote on 6/4/2004, 1:54 AM

I've occassionally done this both ways... If I remember correctly, it's quite simple:

4:3 project with 16:9 DV Widescreen footage:
set project to NTSC DV > perform editing magic > render avi as NTSC DV
all 16:9 footage will be letterboxed at its proper aspect

16:9 project with 4:3 DV footage:
set project to NTSC DV Widescreen > perform editing magic > render avi as NTSC DV Widescreen
all 4:3 footage will be windowboxed at its proper aspect
----------------
Its as simple as that and you should not have to do anything else.
I've been working with NTSC DV, but I imagine this will certainly work for PAL, as well. I do not know if this will work for formats other than DV, but I would imagine it does.

Just make sure you've set your project (PROJECT VIDEO PROPERTIES - the upper left tab in the 'Video Preview' window) to the desired outcome... and when you render, render to the same or similar format as you project properties.

have fun!