Adding a letterbox/border to a project.

LucyPeps wrote on 6/18/2008, 6:10 AM
I've recently made a complete video based on The Sims2, but due to the in-game film camera, the video is basically 320x240 size, and all upload websites stretch the video horribly so you can hardly stand watching it.

I was wondering if there was any way to add a letterbox effect so I can pad out the size of the overall frame without stretching my video itself, since the graphics are really important to it.

Thank you very much if you can help or give me some advice.
I've spent hours and hours on this thing, so it's really frustrating that people can't see it how it's meant to be. =(

Comments

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 6/18/2008, 7:45 AM
In the 'render' box, make sure 'Stretch (do not letterbox)' is NOT chequed.
LucyPeps wrote on 6/18/2008, 9:13 AM
That box is never ticked, and I still have this problem.
Grr! Is it just because YouTube etc are such bad quality that it emphasises everything?
richard-amirault wrote on 6/18/2008, 8:28 PM
The original was 320x240 .. but what size and format are YOU rendering to ... mpg1, mpg2, Quicktime, avi or ???

What is the resolution of the websites that you are uploading to? I understand that YouTube's standard res is 320 x 240 and "hi-res" is 448 x 346
LucyPeps wrote on 6/19/2008, 3:18 PM
320 must be way too small for YouTube, the screens are a lot bigger than that. I do mpg1, and have ranged the size from 320 to 700-and-something, but it still comes out exactly the same. If I can somehow put a border around the video to make the frame bigger, it might stop the pixelation, I just don't know how!

I'll try rendering at at 448x346, but what seems to happen when I render is the movie switches back to the original size of 320 for some reason, even if it's been saved as something else. Confusing!

Thank you for your reply, I hope this will help when I go through the length process of re-rendering and re-uploading tomorrow. I'll let you know if that size works for me. =)
richard-amirault wrote on 6/19/2008, 8:42 PM
You can put the border in the project yourself. You'll have to do it to each sub-section (edit point) of your project.

Go to the first section of the timeline .. all the way to the edit point of the next section. You'll see a couple of incons in the last picture. One of them is a box with short lines coming out at the top left and bottom right. Click on that box to go to the EVENT PAN/CROP tool.

When you get there you can grab a corner of the frame (with the big F) and stretch the frame out and that will make your image smaller with a black 'frame'.

Once you have a size that works for you .. you can save that as a 'pre-set' so that when you do all the other sections you don't have to guess on how far to pull out the corner, just select it from the menu at the top. (or you can type the values in the boxes on the left .. but making a pre-set is *much* easier)