Letterbox

LC514 wrote on 1/15/2005, 11:17 AM
I'm new at digital photography and just bought canon xl2 plus sony vegas editing program. I'm shooting my first project in 16:9 at 24fps. My first question is: once I'm done with the edit can I add the black letterbox around the finished piece so when others view it that don't have widescreen be able to view it the way I intend for my project to be seen?
Second question is: I didn't have sony vegas when I started shooting and didn't know if it had 2:3 3:2 capibility so I shot it at digital 24fps which uses 2:3 @ 29 fps, will that make any difference if transfered to film?
LC

Comments

JJKizak wrote on 1/15/2005, 1:56 PM
Set your preferences to 16 x 9 widescreen 720 x 480. Select entire clip and pan/crop then select 16 x 9 preset. Render as widescreen720 x 480 and set DVD-A to widescreen 16 x 9. When you show the DVD on a 4 x 3 tv it will be automatically letterboxed. When you show the DVD on a 16 x 9 tv it will be 16 x 9. I think thats right but I might have messed it up. The other stuff I can't help. You might do a couple or maybe about 10 test discs like we did to figure it out.


JJK
LC514 wrote on 1/15/2005, 2:42 PM
JJK,
Your the man! Thank you!! Sometihings the sony vegas manual falls a bit short in it's descriptions.
filmy wrote on 1/15/2005, 2:56 PM
Actually be careful - what I am reading leads me to think that you are shooting in 16:9 correct? (I'm shooting my first project in 16:9 at 24fps) If so no need to use the "crop" function. what you want is very simple - just load up the predefined 16:9 widescreen template to edit. When you render choose the matching DVD-A setting. That is all.

The letterboxing is done upon playback based on your settings on the DVD player. Now if all you want is a letterboxed version in 4:3 than it is easy to do as well. Simply rendering your 16:9 footage to a 4:3 project will letterbox it, you do not need to do anything - UNLESS you have the "Stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox)" option checked you will get a widescreen image, letterboxed, in a 4:3 frame.

As for your other question about film transfer and shooting - Sony has a whitepaper around for dowload that explains lots of things. Also there are various websites for companies that do video to film transfers. DvFilm is one of them, and they have suggested setting for the XL-2.
LC514 wrote on 1/15/2005, 8:32 PM
Thanks a bunch! Reason I ask was when I played back the first day of shots on my TV it filled the screen and wasn't letterboxed, this was from the S cable hookup from camera to tv. When I down loaded to sony vegas everything was in letterbox (16:9) format and looked great. I didn't want others viewing who's TV was not widescreen to have the image fill the screen, which loses some of the effect.
LC514 wrote on 1/15/2005, 8:44 PM
Filmy:
I looked up the link you sent ... very nice. I'm shooting scenes I wrote and using other actors. It's looking far better than I imagined. The editing portion is new to me as well as working in the digital format since my background is in film. Canon XL2 is a lot of camera in a little package.
Many thanks to everyone.
LC