Letterbox issue

Rv6tc wrote on 3/24/2007, 8:47 PM
My project is 16:9 and it includes a bunch of stills of all aspect ratios. I just played the final version on our TV which is 4:3. The letterboxing in many places is gray! It happens to about half the pictures, but what's worse it happens during cross fades in the video (all video is 16:9) and in any fade to blacks. Also when I have text displayed with a black background, it really stands out.

Anyone have any ideas? This is a show-stopper for me.

Thanks,
Keith

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 3/24/2007, 9:01 PM
If you want your entire project to be 16:9 and you have events that are not 16:9 then you must apply a 16:9 crop to all events that are not 16:9. This is the only way to fix this.

You can crop one event and they copy and Paste Event Attributes to the others. This will also paste FX so be careful with this. There are also scripts like Ultimate S3 or Celluloid that will do this for you quickly.

~jr
jrazz wrote on 3/24/2007, 9:05 PM
Have you watched it on more than one 4:3 tv? I would view it on another to ensure it is not the tv.

Some other things to check:
Did you have any overlays placed above the track that contained the stills?

Make sure your opacity is set to 100% at the track level.

What type of crossfade are you using?

j razz

Rv6tc wrote on 3/24/2007, 9:53 PM
I've only watched the one TV. I'll have to try another tomorrow.

No overlays.

I've already checked the opacity.

Just the "standard" crossfade... where you drag one event over the others.

I just set up a Braodcast Colors filter for the entire project. I had forgotten that, so maybe that will make a difference. If I have to go back and change everything to 16:9, I may be screwed.

Thanks for the help. I've been freaking out a little.

Keith
mel58i wrote on 3/25/2007, 3:58 AM
Isn't it a pity that vegas doesn't allow you to apply pan/crop to all the project like it does to fx's.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 3/25/2007, 6:12 AM
> Isn't it a pity that vegas doesn't allow you to apply pan/crop to all the project like it does to fx's.

Actually no because just adding Pan/Crop does not totally solve the problem. You then have to watch the video and adjust all of the events where you now cropped someone's head off because of the aspect change. If you applied it to the whole video, you couldn't make these event scoped adjustments. You can use a script to fix this in 2 seconds. That's why Vegas has a script API; so that these tedious tasks can be automated.

~jr
Rv6tc wrote on 3/25/2007, 9:05 AM
JR, I was really hoping that you were wrong. But after adding the broadcast filter, I still have the issue. It is better, but still there. I changed some of the stills to widescreen format, but I guess tonight I'll have to go back and fix the worst offenders. Anything with generated media is the worst. I don't understand this, since I started the entire project as a widescreen project. It seems strange that I would have to set each individual media to widescrreen separate of that. Anyway, thanks for letting me know what it was.

razz - I was able to try it on another TV this morning, and it is not near as noticeable. As a result, I'm only going to have to fix a few spots, not the entire project.... which would have been impossible. Thanks. By the way... I ended up using your 3-d baseball veg as a shell to do my ending. Thank you very much. It's taught me a lot about the 3-d stuff and I may even be able to make my own next time!

Keith
JohnnyRoy wrote on 3/26/2007, 4:22 AM
How are you rendering the project? I just noticed that you said the letterboxing was gray. The letterboxing should be produced by the DVD player if the project is render to 16:9 so there should be nothing in the letterbox that you produced nor could chnage. Are you adding the letterboxing by any chance? You should not be.

~jr
JJKizak wrote on 3/26/2007, 6:11 AM
I believe the grey letterboxing is caused by filter application to the entire track, such as brightness change which raises the brightness of the project and because the settings are not set to 16 x 9 all the black letterboxing is brightened to look grey.

JJK