cropping dilemma (footage from vixia)

s k r o o t a y p wrote on 6/10/2010, 6:52 PM

everything i shot with the canon vixia is represented in the preview window as widescreen with the black bars top & bottom of the frame. so now when i crop any of it, it fills the entire frame & exceeds the black borders becoming full screen. how do we deal with this to make a less confusing and uniform video? seems like it should be elementary, what am i missing?

thanks,
david

Comments

david_f_knight wrote on 6/10/2010, 8:51 PM

You probably haven't set your Project Properties to match your source video footage.

s k r o o t a y p wrote on 6/14/2010, 12:30 PM

i remember you can do that when you're initially opening a project but how do you make that adjustment once a project is underway? (i looked under project poperties and didn't see where to do it)

thanks,
david

Paul C wrote on 6/14/2010, 12:44 PM

In the Project Properties window, you need to click on the icon to the right of the Template drop-down - it's the icon on the far right.

s k r o o t a y p wrote on 6/14/2010, 5:46 PM

thanks, i found it, however it opened another dialogue box. sorry i'm a bit slow, what do i do next with the box that opened? i.e.:

"file name:
files of type:
recent:"

also, once i have matched the properties. what will i see in the preview window that will confirm i've done the right thing?

david_f_knight wrote on 6/14/2010, 8:09 PM

What you need to do in the Match Media dialog box that opened is to navigate to one of the source video files that is in your project. Select one of those video files and click the Open button, and Vegas will read it and extract most of the relevant information from it to set your Project Properties.

Once you have matched the properties, you should not see black bars in the preview window.