letterbox effect for normal TV?

deejayhart wrote on 1/7/2004, 1:20 AM
Loads of questions here really, but I will try to make it simple...

1) I live in UK, and have filmed all my footage using the widescreen setting on my SONY TRV-80 - which looks great on the LCD but playing back on a regular TV, it stretches vertically, and I actually want to retain the cinema-style letterbox effect - how can I do this, I know I need to import into Vegas and render back to DV, but any pointers?

2) I want to use the same footage and turn it into Flash video - again, to keep the letterbox effect - is there a way to "crop" this capture so that the top and bottom black bit is removed? I imagine it is possible to crop it rather like using a photoshop marquee, thus creating a custom size?

3) The video properties I found needed the field order scan set to none rather than upper or lower field, is this correct?

4) Pixel aspect ratio is set to 0.9091 (NTSC DV) - is this the right one for TV settings?

Obviously, I have two needs here - to make good for tv viewing (UK settings) and also to be able to render it in a way that works well with Flash/Sorenson... I know there are loads of questions, and I will also want to explore the issue of file compression - i.e. how best to make a 320 pixel movie work as a small file size, in QT and Flash, but this should be enough for now - I am most grateful to anyone who has the time to help me out here, its an exciting field but very confusing!

best,

Daniel Hart
www.djh-graphics.com
dan@djh-graphics.com

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 1/7/2004, 7:25 AM
For flash, You'd need to create a custom size, and turn off aspect ratio in Pan/crop to crop out the black letterboxes, be sure that your render and preview aspects are 1.0 rather than .9
As far as NTSC, if you set up a project using letterbox, it shouldn't be squashing after rendering. It will squash during preview if your monitor won't accept 16:9 It will also squash on a standard 4:3 display if the television can't manage it. The only way to manage this, is to use Pan/crop, a 4:3 project setting, and pan/crop the images using the Pan/crop 16:9 preset, which will kill some of your picture, but that's inevitable at some point.
Azul wrote on 1/8/2004, 7:43 PM
First you must create a project based on the tv standard of your country (PAL for UK) NOT wide screen. Then import your footage to the time line. Use the "pan crop" tool and right click over the "F" to select -match output aspect-
This way sides areas will be detached to macht automatically to your TV without defroming the figures.

Good luck!
PAW wrote on 1/9/2004, 7:19 AM

The flow as I understand it should be

Setup the project for the target output, in your case PAL or PAL Widescreen. If it is PAL widescreen you will have to play it on a widescreen TV for the aspect to look correct.

If you are playing from a DVD player there is usaully an option in the DVD player setup that allows you to specify that it should be letterboxed if the TV is not 16:9. The player will then electronically letterbox when the DVD is played.

When you say it does not display in the correct aspect is this the finished media or the preview to external monitor. If it is the preview to external monitor and the monitor is 4:3 not widescreen you would expect it to squash the preview. What really matters is the final media and what it will be displayed on.

The preview to external monitor should pass 16:9 video through to the external preview as uncompressed frames (this is displayed in the preview window on the computer screen). This would display correctly on a 16:9/Widescreen TV/monitor.

If additonal media is added to the timeline you need to open the pan/crop dialogue box and right click to match the media to project aspect ratio (widescreen) then these frames will be compressed when displayed on the external preview (shown in the computer screen i.e. Vegas has to do something with them to match the output aspect of the project.

Does that sound right everone?

Regards, Paul