Comments

Chienworks wrote on 11/4/2013, 8:48 AM
Well, first you have to decide the method you want. You can:

- Embed: entire image inside the frame, with black borders top & bottom (letterboxing)
- Crop: dropping off the left & right sides and fill the frame
- Stretch: entire image filling frame, everyone "tall & skinny"
- or some combination of the above.

All of these are easily achievable with the Pan/Crop tool. Set the project up for 4:3 and drop your 16:9 clip onto the timeline. Open up Pan/Crop on the event

- Embed: do nothing
- Crop: right-mouse-button inside the cropping frame and choose 'match output aspect'.
- Stretch: change Source : Maintain aspect ratio to No and Stretch to fill frame to Yes
arthur39 wrote on 11/4/2013, 10:42 AM
Thank you so much for the quick reply ...

How do I embed the entire project (letterboxing). That's project #1 - already edited in 16:9 and needs to be 4:3

Project #2 (not edited yet) has main video in 4:3, and cover shots in 16:9. How do I set the project up for 4:3?
Chienworks wrote on 11/4/2013, 1:08 PM
You should be able to simply render to a 4:3 output template. That should be all that has to be done.

Project properties are set in File / Project Properties.

Where are your output files going to be used? Almost any playback system capable of playing a digital file in any form will that knows it has a 4:3 output will do the letterboxing itself on playback without you having to set it up as 4:3. Have you tried just simply playing it and see what happens? Computers are self-aware enough that any media player software will do this automatically. DVD players have a setup option to tell it whether it's connected to a 4:3 or 16:9 screen, and you probably want to have this set properly for everything that's played back, not just your video.
arthur39 wrote on 11/5/2013, 7:05 AM
This probably seems like a simple question to you, but to me, I didn't know what to do. Your reply and instructions to change the template to 4:3 was exactly what I was looking for. That solves my problem for the future. Thank you very much.

But the solution for the previous video I did in SD 16:9 are still unsolved. The video will be used in a small TV network. They converted my 16:9 format to 4:3 and cut off most of the graphics and text. I haven't seen it , and I don't know what they did, but was told it looked awfull.

Not much I can do about that, but now I know how to process future episodes by shooing in 4:3 and editing with the proper format.

Again, I thank you.
Chienworks wrote on 11/5/2013, 7:59 AM
It sounds like the TV station did a crop rather than an embed.