Well, if you're going to really make actual 2.35:1 and don't care about being DVD-compliant then your answer is incredibly simple. Choose a vertical resolution you're happy with (say 480 or 360) and mutiply that by 2.35 (to get 1128 or 846). Set your project properties to this with a 1.0 PAR. Drop anything onto the timeline and in pan/crop choose Match Output Aspect.

Done.

I don't think you understand the difference between Screen Aspect Ratio (SAR) and Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR)!!

HD has a SAR of 16:9, on that screen the pixels are square i.e 1:1
If you shoot HDV the camera records 1440x1080 pixels, the PAR is
1.3333:1
If you shoot FullHD the camera records 1920x1080 pixels, the PAR is 1:1.

If you shoot DVCProHD the camera records 1280x1080 pixels, the PAR is 1.50:1

All of the above deliver the exact same result on the 16:9 screen. In other words, we've got three different pixel aspect ratios and yet we get the same result!

What is known as Cinemascope defines a Screen Aspect Ratio. How you record the image does not matter one little bit, it's totally irrelevant and the PAR will make NO difference. It's really all that simple. You can stretch, squeeze or mangle the pixels any way you can. So long as the squeezing gets undone, so long as they end up square on the screen it is OK. In other words if you filmed a circle and when you projected your image it filled a screen 2.35:1 and the circle was still a circle, that's it, job done, end of story, forget about anything else.

Now to deliver 2.35:1 SD NTSC into the widescreen which is 873x480 pixels, guess what, you're really out of luck. That's it, the screen is only 873 pixels wide, it doesn't come any wider. So the only way to get that magical 2.35:1 screen aspect ratio is to cut off the top and bottom. Note carefully, we are NOT changing the PAR. We can change the SAR by cutting the top and bottom off the image. You could do this with black paint, gaffe tape, pieces of wood or you could just black out the pixels you don't want the audience to see. I'm not being silly here. I've many times seen monitors 'masked' with black tape. Cameras have guide frames for the same reason. Many HD cameras have guide frames for 2.35:1 and 4:3.

At no point would any sane person change the PAR, even if you could, here's why:

NTSC DV always records 720x480 pixels. It can be displayed as 655x480 pixels to give a SAR of 4:3. Or it can be displayed as 873x480 to give 16:9. Note a very important thing here, the number of vertical pixels doesn't change, neither the recorded image or the displayed image. in SD NTSC it stays at 480. In SD PAL it stays as 576. In HD it stays as 1080. This is really important but not so obvious why.

Let's say you did manage to record your 2.35:1 image as real anamorpic. You've got still 720 pixels wide on the tape or DVD, that's still got to get stretched out to 873 pixels to fit the TV. HOWEVER we've got to shrink the number of vertical pixels to fit only 371 pixels on the screen to get the SAR of 2.35:1. Very bad thing to do, the people who designed the television system saw the problem and that's why none of the standards do such a thing. Changing vertical resolution in a system that scans the image has big problems, you need very careful interpolation or the image can really fall apart, certainly not something you'd want to do in real time. The eye is more sensitive to vertical resolution than horizontal resolutio also. That's why it's not too easy to tell the difference between FullHD, HDV and DVCProHD. They all keep the same vertical resolution.

So as we've all being trying to tell you. The task is dead simple. Just do everything as 16:9. That's all you can display, that's all you can deliver. You just black out (mask) the bits you don't want the audience to see. Heck you could even supply some black cardboard for them to mask out their screens, same result.

Now while you're working on this 16:9 project you must be aware that parts of the top and bottom of the frame will be chopped off, that's a given. You can also keep in mind if animating still images that they don't have to fill the frame all the way to the top and bottom as you're going to mask that part out anyway. But that's it.

Bob.

I'll add one other line of thought ...

You've expressed the desire to put 2.35:1 on a DVD, and you've mentioned that none of your material is current 2:35:1 so you'd like to work on a 2:35:1 project for ease of workflow.

I'll suggest you do this in two parts then. As per my previous reply create a real 2.35:1 project with a PAR of 1.0. Perhaps use a frame size of 1128x480 as that is exactly 2.35:1 and both dimensions are mutliples of 8. Use this project to crop and compose your media to the 2.35:1 shape you want. Render to uncompressed AVI or cineform or Sony YUV or huffyuv, all of which are lossless or only marginally lossy. Make sure the render settings match the project settings including PAR of 1.0.

Now, once that project is complete and rendered, create a new 16:9 widescreen NTSC project. Drop the previously rendered file onto the timeline. DON'T DO ANYTHING ELSE!!!! Especially don't change any dimensions or aspect ratios. Don't do it even if you think you need to or want to for any reason whatsoever. Just don't. Render to MPEG2 using widescreen NTSC DVDA template. Render the audio too. Author & burn DVD. Done.

There will be black bars across the top and bottom. This is fine. Not only is it fine, it is correct and necessary. You cannot make a 2.35:1 DVD. You can put 2.35:1 material inside a widescreen frame on a DVD.

Bob, that was a great explanation!

Yeah, great explanation, thanks a lot to you both. You know, I was almost getting there, configuring the project as 1280x720 BUT leaving the PAR at 1,3275...

(720*2,35 = 1692/1280 = 1,3275). Save project> example.veg> open another instance of Vegas at 16:9 widescreen 1,2121>import the media (veg file). Almost there ah..?

Edit: this way. when you make a transition there are no black lines at the bottom or above the picture at all.

Can I please ask you one more question? How do you really know that the PAR is 1,0 [square] for a sar of 2.35:1?

Edit: This way, when there's a transition, I see a very thin black line at the bottom of the picture and another one thinner above.

Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience :)

I don't. You can use any PAR you want for a non-standard format. If you want to set it up as 360x720 with a PAR of 4.7 you may. Or, you could use 2350x360 with a PAR of 0.36. Either one will work, though you'll unnecessarily lose resolution either way.

I suggested 1128x480 with a PAR of 1.0 for two reasons:
- conceptually it's a lot easier because the frame dimensions are proportional to the image shape so there's much less math involved
- you mentioned that a lot of your material was still photos which generally have a PAR of 1.0 so why not match that?

Widescreen and SD NTSC have weird PARs of 1.2121 and 0.9091 respectively because a single frame size of 720x480 was chosen to fit both formats. If i ruled the world then widescreen would be 873x480 and SD would be 655x480, both of them with a PAR of 1.0. However, that would mean that the two formats wouldn't be able to share a lot of interchangable features, equipment that handled one format might not be able to handle the other, etc. Since the difference between the formats is small the engineers responsible apparently decided that fudging the PAR and keeping the frame size the same was a worthwhile choice.

If you don't *have to* work with a non-square PAR, why do it? Just go for square 1.0 and make your life easier when you can.

Thank you very much, Bob, for your help and explanations. Thanks, really.
Cheers,
Mark