how to do WideScreen Video?

the_learninator wrote on 2/1/2004, 4:25 PM
I recorded my video using a Sony Digital camcorder and after I finish transferring it to my computer I want to know how I can make it so my video appears in widescreen view when someone puts it in there DVD player. I want the black borders to be at the top and bottom. Is there a video effect I have to apply or a setting I have to check?

I'd really appreciate as much input as possible.

Comments

filmy wrote on 2/1/2004, 4:44 PM
1> Was the material shot in widescreen? If so all you *should* have to do it use the template for widescreen/16:9 and the DVD player will do the letterboxing automaticly.

2> If you shot it 4:3 and want to convert to either 'anamorphic' or just add the letter box you can do a few things. One is to use the pan/crop tool and just click on the 16:9 crop...instant 16:9. When you render you either select the "stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox)" to render 'anamorphic' or check it to render 4:3 with the "letterbox". The other way is to just put the black bars on as an overlay either with graphic or using the Zenote "letterbox" plug-in.
the_learninator wrote on 2/1/2004, 7:41 PM
DAGG on it! I just now checked and saw that I have a setting on my camera to shoot in widescreen. CRAP!

Okay I'd like to do the easiest way possible. Doing the pan & crop tool would take me forever because I had the capture setting to break the files up every 400MB and I got like 130 AVI files.

I rendered little 5 sec clips to see how the output would look. the 1st time I did it I chose the NTSC DVD template and went to custom/video tab and changed the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9 and the file came to 10MB then I did it again but this time I checked "stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox)" and used the pan/crop tool and made the fram 16:9 and used the normal MPEG-2 file type default template and it came to 7MB (30% smaller file size)

the output looks the same for both. the lines looked a little squigily but when I make it full screen it seems ok. I just hope it wont be squgily depending on the tv you pop the DVD in.

So what do you think I should do. Why is one 10MB and the other 7MB?

the_learninator wrote on 2/1/2004, 7:50 PM
i'm probably going to go with the pan/crop idea because when I looked closely I noticed that the video on the of the 1st method (NTSC DVD template) I tried didn't stretch all the way to the end of the monitor and it was a bigger file size (a little clearer but smaller) and the pan/crop method worked better because it did stretch all the way and was smaller in size

BUT How do you get rid of those sguigily lines. Or is that just because it's on my monitor? That doesn't happen when I put professional DVDs in my computer.
RBartlett wrote on 2/2/2004, 12:14 AM
Don't fret that you didn't shoot in widescreen mode. Unless you are working at the mid to high end of cameras, widescreen mode would be a pseudo widescreen that ditches part of the image by dropping raster lines.

If you wanted anamorphic, you'd adapt the glass and not the mode from being 4:3.

Squiggly lines may benefit from a mask, top and/or bottom. This might just be interleaved twitching. Wherever you have black bars right now, you could have a motion backdrop to make your 4:3 footage a bit more interesting on a 16:9 TV, which typically would be in the "overscan-only" area for 4:3 TV viewers (dependent on their DVD player preferences not being to letterbox 16:9 discs).