How to Change Project/Output - Letterbox > None?

Soniclight wrote on 1/21/2008, 12:35 AM


Self-explanatory, I hope.

I'm thinking of a few options incl. mask and such but would rather have precise how-to then spend hours with hit and miss.

Reason for this conversion:

--- When started learning this craft of video creation and editing, I had eventual SD TV in mind, so worked in 4:3. And on the web, it didn't matter that I had the letterbox.

Now that I'm getting some online and perhaps DVD interest in my stuff, I want to drop the letterbox/bars.

I have both an 6 gig uncompressed .avi and a 2.5 Huff compressed one of this particular project. Probably far simpler to solve this with a new project with either one of these renders.

But am still stumped as to how.
I'll be applying this new knowledge to all my past projects.

Thanks for your help and advice.

...........................................................

P.S.

Comments

farss wrote on 1/21/2008, 1:16 AM
If you have 16:9 video letterboxed into 4:3 then the simplest approach is as you've probably already guessed is to drop it into a 16:9 project. Open Event Pan/Crop and select Match Output Aspect. You may need to adjust the size of the mask to remove any black borders as 720x540 seems an odd size to start with.

You might loose some resolution taking the above approach. The best way is to rebuild the whole thing in a 16:9 project. Might be easy or might be a heck of a lot of work.

Bob.
Soniclight wrote on 1/21/2008, 1:32 AM
Bob,

Thanks.

Well, hopefully it's going to be simple -- I spoze I'll find out if I lose rez when I render out a section, but what I did as per your advice is...

--- Changed the project to 720x486, then the Match Output in crop. Looks right.

Seems to me that since width is identical, I shouldn't lose resolution. We basically just chopped off the letterbox. But then the pixel ration is now 1.2121 (NTSC DV Widescreen).

As far as the 720x540, haven't a clue why I have it that way. It was quite a long time ago that I did this thing, so a then-newbie goof.
Soniclight wrote on 2/9/2008, 10:20 AM
Started a different project with 720x480 project settings, so 16:9. Looks right in in-project Preview as I have the 4:3 footage from my very basic SD cam cropped to match output.

BUT...

Every time I render in VP8, be it with or without stretch/no letterbox, I get either a letterboxed 4:3 or plain old 4:3.
Have tried 1:1 and 1:2121 ratio, don't seem to get anywhere.

And have used basic uncompressed project template too.

I am missing something so newbie, it's embarrassing to ask for help.
But indeed, thy help I needeth, oh ye Vegas wise ones.
Udi wrote on 2/9/2008, 10:33 PM
Set your project to ntsc dv widescreen.
Render to avi using the ntsc dv widescreen template

Soniclight wrote on 2/10/2008, 8:22 AM
Did that, still no-go. See test render stills of something I shot while riding my motorcycle at night here.

(Pardon deleted messages, but the server here was really slow when I posted this, thought it wasn't getting posted, but did 3 times...)
JohnnyRoy wrote on 2/10/2008, 9:24 AM
> Every time I render in VP8, be it with or without stretch/no letterbox, I get either a letterboxed 4:3 or plain old 4:3.

It sounds like you are setting the project up correctly (i.e., NTSC DV Widescreen project and then use Pan/Crop | Match Output Aspect in the clip).

I can only assume the problem is with the render template you are using. Since you didn't say, here is what it should be.

For rendering you should be using:

Save as type: Video for Windows (*.avi)
Template: NTSC DV Widescreen

It shouldn't matter if you have the Stretch/Letterbox option checked because you have already cropped your video to match the output exactly. So it should have no effect either way.

Let us know if this fixes the problem. If not, bring the rendered video back into Vegas, right-click on it and select Properties..., move to the Media tab and check the Pixel aspect ratio: to make sure it is set to "1.2121 (NTSC DV Widescreen)".

~jr
Soniclight wrote on 2/10/2008, 10:13 AM
Boy is this getting frustrating. I even went back to a very, very simple project (the one mentioned in the first posting in this thread which has only one uncompressed video file).

And I dropped in the moto-at-night in there too.

--- Project settings are: NTSC Widescreen 720x480
--- Render template: Widescreen too.

Tried changing media properties from .901 or 1.000 to 1.2121.

Test rendered bot the project's one vid and the dropped moto one.
Same freaking thing happens: I get a 4:3 with letterbox.

More of this and I'm going to take a breather, it's driving me nuts...
In fact, I'm shutting Vegas down now, will deal with this later.