How do I convert 4:3 to widescreen???

Astronaut wrote on 8/21/2003, 3:51 PM
I'm trying to convert a movie shot in 4:3 PAL DV to PAL DV Widescreen but it looks terrible. Here's how I tried doing it:

1. I changed the project properties to "PAL DV Widescreen". This adds black bars to the left and right sides of the image in the Preview Window.

2. I then opened the pan/crop window on all the video events, right-klicked on the image, and chose "Match Output Aspect". This changes the "F-box" to widescreen.

In the Preview Window, the movie is now undoubtedly in widescreen, with the top and bottom of the picture cropped, wich is totally ok.

BUT the image quality is conciderably more fuzzy, espacially when viewed on an external monitor (through firewire out). It looks way worse than after an ordinary resample.

It looks like though the image is shrinked and then magnified again, losing resolution in the prosess. Is this what actually happens?

Is there a better way to do this?

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 8/21/2003, 6:20 PM
Make some color bars (in Photoshop, or as a shape in Vegas). Just make a white rectangle @ 16x9 ratio, and put a black background behind it. Plop it on the top most video layer, and make the white transparent. All done! I do this at work when I have interference from a BetaCam or SVHS tape on the top/bottom of the screen.