Thanks! Exactly what I was looking for.

Of course, now I feel really inadequate as a Vegas user!

Here's another thread related to this:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=700325

A family member wanted a video of an orchid show they attended recently. I quickly slapped this together this past weekend, used the Gaussian Blurred and/or Defocused background for 16:9 pillar-fillers. Many of the pictures filled the whole frame and made it difficult to crop into a 16:9 area.

Basically using the technique mentioned by rs170a, I feathered the edges on Various clips using the Cookie cutter and used masking to create a poor-man's DOF effect.

Pretty boring transitions, I just like the plain fades and hard cuts. IMHO I've found too many fancy transistions make the video look cheezy.

It's only about 1/3 of the total length but hopefully give some ideas and techniques how to fill the pillars. (;



Here's a snippet of my cousins change of command I did a few years ago in Vegas Movie Studio. The background was done by rotating a portion of the curtain, using pan/crop. This was done because the person who took the video, cropped the subject very close to the edge of the frame and when it was played on a regular TV would cut the heads off.

Some of the best and most elegant solutions tend to have you go "Duh!, of course. Why didn't I think of that?" once you read them :)

Byron, first I like what you have done. There is no single way of handling this
issue.

Being a person with grey hair and glasses, I find the blurring of the pillars
somehow way too noticeable. I noticed the network feed's pillars are sharp
and have motion backgrounds with subtle differences in element colors.

NBC, here in the USA, has their corporate logo (peacock feathers) move about
and fade in out.

And then there's me, the Luddite, who finds pillar fillers distracting and annoying. Leaving them solid black makes them disappear and then all i notice is the 4:3 image on the screen.