Try this:
skip step 4, and deselect maintain aspect ratio switch in the event properties.
Perhaps this will work for you, it seems to for me. Also the mask technique futz mentions is good.
Cheers,

I don't think you understand. Adding a mask won't turn the 4:3 video into 16:9. If I do that, I'll have black bars on all sides of the video when viewed on a widescreen TV.

I want to crop the 4:3 footage and render it as 16:9 so that it shows up properly on a widescreen TV.

Paul

The problem with that is by not maintaining the aspect ratio, people get "wider" when viewed on the television. Therefore deselecting the "maintain aspect ratio" switch is not acceptable.

I found that if I crop to 720x360 as opposed to 720x405, everything looks exactly how I expect it to. I'm theorizing that the difference in pixel aspect ratio between NTSC DV (0.9091) and NTSC DV Widescreen (1.2121) accounts for the loss in 45 vertical pixels.

I'd appreciate some insight from someone who knows what's going on.

Paul

We spent hours trying differnet forum suggestions to dumb down our broadcast 16:9 DSR 500WS footage to letter box on a 4:3 monitor. Finally had to "squish" the source tapes through an AVID Media Composer, though apparently Boris FX Red DVE is another solution. Vegas was doing it kinda sorta but the horendous aliasing around vertical lines rendered the output unsuitable. Hopefully I am going to find an easy solution to this temporary predicament.

Peter

Hi Folks,

I've been pondering this for more time this morning that I should have...

So far: some thoughts and a couple of lingering questions.

Shooting 4:3 for widescreen will require 1) Setting the project properties to widescreen and 2) cropping of the image to the proper aspect. Since widescreen utilizes 480 vertical pixels the cropped image needs to be scaled vertically, degrading resolution and enhancing the original interlacing significantly.

To improve the vertical artifacts, it might help to use the progressive mode (blending fields), provided you are outputting to a format that can utilize progressive footage. (I haven't tried printing progresive DV to tape, maybe later today)...

The widescreen project should set the flag so that widescreen devices display properly or letterbox for 4:3 display in a DVD player outputting . (SoFo, correct me if I'm off here)

Footage shot DV widescreen should be automatically letterboxed when used in a 4:3 project. Similarly, DV widscreen footage used in a DV widescreen project should display properly on widescreens or letterbox as above.


The questions are sorta perplexing...

What is the *frame* aspect of DV widescreen? When cropping 4:3 for DVWS, "match output aspect" crops to 720x360... whereas using the 16:9 preset crops to 720x405. (?)

When shooting 16:9 (say, with a sony 500), what is the PAR and what are the pixel dimensions? (maybe Peter can shed some light)


Beyond that, I got nuthin...


mph

Hi,

Poked around Google, etc... One post on usenet indicated that 360 is the correct vertical dimension due to the non-square pixels in DV.

The post also indicated the proper output dimensions are 360 vertically if using the MC encoder within Vegas, and using the DV widescreen template when rendering avi for encoding externally.

The post rings as fairly well informed, but you all can decide:

http://groups.google.com/groups?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_qdr=all&q=+%22dv+widescreen%22+aspect&sa=N&tab=wg

I'll keep playing and see what emerges.


mph

Paul:

Steps 1--3: perfect
Step 4: Right-click in pan/crop image, choose "Match Output Aspect".

720x360 crop, no black bars, just what you need.

The presets in pan/crop are not playing nicely with the source media's pixel aspect ratio, I'll log that as a bug.

///d@

Dennis--

Showing my ignorance here... when I follow the prescribed steps, once I click on "Match Output Aspect," it the cropping drops down from 16:9 Widescreen TV aspect ratio to the 1.85:1 Academy aspect ratio. Why is that?

It's not for me, I'm getting 720x360 for "Match" and 720x389.2 for Academy.
///d@

No matter which present I select, once I click on "Match" I get 720 x 360.

Was a step left out in creating a new project? Don't you need to select in "pixel apsect ratio" 1.2121 (NTSC DV Widescreen? Or is that my problem?

"The questions are sorta perplexing... "
"When shooting 16:9 (say, with a sony 500), what is the PAR and what are the pixel dimensions?"

Hi Marty

Food for more though perhaps... To my knowledge (with all the usual disclaimers) HDTV in it's various types has a set widescreen dimension/aspect ratio and so on - pretty much everything else is fair game to whatever the folks producing the video think looks best (read interviews that say just that). If you start looking at what's out there today, very few true 6 x 9 ratios exist, though there are trends for North America, Europe etc.

Of course I'm not talking about the camera ratios but the finished video. I always thought it interesting that most films are pan/cropped from 4:3 to ~ 16:9, then go back through pan/scan to turn them back into 4:3 for DVD or broadcast. I *think* a lot of the folks shooting one of the HDTV varieties today go through a bit of that pan & scan or crop to get to their desired final aspect.

One thing I am looking forward to is if/when something like mpg4 &/or winmedia9 is playable by most stand alone DVD players. Those formats are more flexible, let you just render your video to whatever aspect ratio leaving any letterboxing to the display hardware (say goodbye to anamorphic). Much nicer results too IMO as compressing the black letterbox is problematic and wasteful, not to mention a pain I imagine when you can't get to where you want without both anamorphic and letterboxing.

mike

Same here, also noted as a bug. The picture keeps "squeezing" with the crop instead of the crop overlaying an intact picture.

Editor, where are you from in the South?

Who of thunk it? Right clicking there? I guess I should have more thoroughly read the manual eh? Perfect! I love Vegas!

Paul