4:3 to 16:9

ilmagic wrote on 3/10/2010, 7:03 AM

Hi,
if I have some 4:3 movies, is it a good idea to turn them into widescreen videos importing them into a 16:9 project and using the Vegas pan/zoom panel to make them fit the screen size or can this bring unexpected trouble? I have project made using another video editor containing an interview video I need to use as input media in a Vegas project, so I was wondering if it would be better to export it as uncompressed AVI (avoiding multiple rendering and image quality loss) or as DV (enabling me to set the export aspect ratio to widescreen). Thank you

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 3/10/2010, 7:09 AM

Anyone who owns a widescreen TV is used to seeing pillarboxing (black sidebars) from 4:3 source material. Broadcasters make no attempt to crop and zoom their older content to fill the widescreen format.

Although you will get discussion and varying opinions, many experienced editors will just tell you to leave it alone.

richard-courtney wrote on 3/10/2010, 7:31 AM

Try placing your 4:3 content in front ot an attractive moving16:9 background with the
same color scheme.

bsuratt wrote on 3/10/2010, 8:38 AM

One of the tricks "as seen on TV" today is to duplicate your video track. On the bottom track zoom to fit 16:9 frame then blur so as to unfocus. Top track will overlay with 4:3 material and result is a 16:9 wide with unfocused borders which follow action in 4:3 material. Network news is using this a lot lately and it looks good.

Byron K wrote on 3/10/2010, 10:30 AM

RCourtney, bsuratt,
Excellent suggestions. I've also done something similar. A relative wanted a DVD of their nephew's Navy change of command ceremony and provided video in 4:3 format I wanted to put it in 16:9 format so they could view it on a wide screen TV w/ minimal loss due to corpping the 4:3 video to 16:9.

What I did was very similar to what Bsuratt suggested, is placed a duplicate video track below the main track. Zoomed in on an area of the video that had a color scheme that matched the mood of the main video, added Gausian blur, slooow rotate, pan and zoom. The effect in the pillar box turned out really nice IMHO.

ECB wrote on 3/10/2010, 10:59 AM

Here is a tutorial at VASST
EB