Another way to do it is this -

Add it to "Video output FX" portion. Make it the very last thing in the chain. Keep in mind whatever you put here will *really* be added to everything video wise. Use the Cookie Cutter. Set it to "Square". Border at 0.50, Repeat X = 2, Repeat Y = 1. See if that works for you - adjust border as needed.

Keep in mind that with cropping it you are actually resizing the frame and than resizing again on output. So, For example, you have a 16:9 widescreen project and drop in 4:3 footage. You crop that footage and it will upscale to 16:9. Now when you render if you use a 4:3 setting it will down scale that footage again to fit into a 4:3 aspect ratio adding the black bars. So that is a lot of un needed work if all you want to do is add the black bars. The method I said above would be better, probably faster too. Other people create a mask in Photoshop and import that and others use Zenotes Letterbox plug-in.

> So that is a lot of un needed work if all you want to do is add the black bars

Why would anyone want to add black bars? I would think that what you want to do is scale your video to fit a 16:9 TV. The fact that the same video will produce black bars on a 4:3 TV is irrelevant. Simply adding a black mask to 4:3 video will produce a postage stamp with black bars on ALL sides on a 16:9 TV (i.e., a black mask does not make it widescreen). What is the point of that? (or am I missing something here? I ask out of curiosity, not criticism. I don’t own a widescreen TV so I can’t really judge here.)

~jr

I don't really know myself why these black bars are so important!
Ok, if you put on black bars - it shows the bars on a normal tv - it don't on a w/s job cause the pict looks w/s.
I there's no bars it's ok on a normal tv, but cut off at the top and bottom on w/s set. But you're cutting off the top and bottom of the picture by adding the bars in the first place.
I'm very confused myself - and I don't own a w/s set either. There's nowt wrong with 4:3 so why is w/s so fantastic (guess it must be Hollywood with their funny aspect ratios).

Mel.

Just a warning about using the pan/crop widescreen preset - and how that impacts the resulting video. Merely adding this preset will likely alter your video to make it look "softer" when you render.

Check out a prior post about this

Liam, I do remember a long time ago I converted a previosly shot avi file to "true w/s" in vegas of a indoor bowling match with mats with white edges.
When I had rendered it, I saw that the white edges would look jagged on a diagonal shot.
It took a lot of experimenting to finally discover that if I set the de-interlace method to "blend" or "interpolate" (blend seemed best) then these jagged edges disappeared.

Mel.

Mel.... we're talking about completely different things here (I believe). In the circumstances I described (using the pan/crop to add widescreen "bars" to 4:3 clips) you MUST turn off de-interlacing if you want to maintain quality.

Other alternative is not to use Pan/Crop to add the bars... but instead place a mask over the top of the video.

For me however... this whole "issue" was somewhat of a revelation. I had no idea that by using pan/crop that Vegas would need to de-interlace interlaced video (I didn't do something that I thought would re-quire de-interlacing). The impact of this "feature" was remarkable (bad).

Maybe we need to redefine some things here -

I was under the impression that mel58i wanted to take 4:3 footage and end up with a letterboxed look - and he asked about cropping. So on the one hand, yes you can do it this way - take the cropping part away for a second and remember that when you take 16:9 footage and render it out using a 4:3 setting you end up with a letterboxed 4:3 image (unless you have the ''Stretch video to fill output frame size" option checked)

What I said was that if that was all that was needed was a "letterboxed" look don't do the cropping. Just slap on the "letterbox" so to speak.

*BUT* - if the idea is to burn it to a DVD and have it presented either way than you would need to crop the 4:3 image. However you would also render out via a 16:9 / widescreen preset to Mpg for DVD authoring. On playback, as long as the DVD player is set correct, you will either get the widescreen image on a widescreen TV or a letterboxed image on a 4:3 TV.

I do have a widescreen TV. As long as it is set to widescreen mode it plays back everything as if it were native 16:9. Thusly anything 4:3 is a bit squished. If I choose the "zoom" mode I can "crop" a 4:3 apsect to 16:9 and you get the result that mel58i describes - you cut off the top and bottom of the frame. I can only speak for the set I have but if I have the aspect set to 4:3 than I would get what JohnnyRoy describes - bars all around the image. However for me I never have it set to 4:3.

So this is maybe what is not clear here. What is the end result? Maybe I misread the question first asked.

JohnnyRoy, you sort of pounced there with your response and didn't try to answer anything. As I said *if* all that was wanted was to add black bars than cropping was a lot of undeeded work. And FWIW many DVD's are now coming out that are even wider than the widescreen sets, so even when viewed on a widescreen set you have black bars. First few I got I thought I had the "Full frame / letterboxed" versions or something. Than I took a close look at the box - "Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1". the HD widescreen sets are based on the 1.85:1 ratio and anything shot that way fills the screen fine. However the 2.35:1 has black bars on the top and bottom. So you if you are watching this on a 15 inch, 4:3 monitor than yes, you will have a "postage stamp" image.

Another FWIW - I have several of the VHS "Letterbox" versions that came out years ago. I was never bothered by watching them on 20-some inch TV's.


**edit for spelling.