Letterboxing stills

margaret-taylor wrote on 7/15/2017, 7:16 AM

I created a film in Vegas Pro 14 using stills and moving image. I cropped the stills at 16:9 TV output ratio. The result was that the stills and moving image all looked ok in Vegas - no letterboxing, no seeing the moving image beneath the stills on transition.

I then rendered the project using DVD Architect Widescreen PAL video screen and found that the stills were slightly smaller than the moving image. So while transitioning from still to moving image you could see a slight part of the moving image either side of the still. So I checked on help and ticked stretch video to fill frame size. This has still not got rid of the problem.

I also rendered for the exact same project for vimeo which works perfectly - no letterboxing.

Could anyone tell me what the problem is please?

Software: Vegas Pro 14, DVD Architect 7

Hardware: Microsoft Surface Pro 4

 

Comments

EricLNZ wrote on 7/15/2017, 7:09 PM

Widescreen PAL DVD is very slightly wider than true16:9 widescreen. It's square pixel equivalent is 1049x576 and not 1024x576 . What you are seeing at the edges is the difference as your true 16:9 isn't filling the screen. You need to crop your stills to the equivalent ratio of 1049/576 which is 16.39:9.

Alternatively put your Project Properties on PAL DV Widescreen and tick the box "Adjust source media to better match ......". Your images should then get slightly cropped to fit. I'm using MS14 but I assume it's the same in Pro14.

margaret-taylor wrote on 7/16/2017, 3:01 AM

Thanks for your message. I had ticked the "adjust source media.." button in Vegas and rendered to PAL DV widescreen but it didn't work.    Didn't realise the dimensions of PAL DVD were different to 16:9. Is there a way to specify the actual crop dimensions of 16.39:9 in Vegas instead of following the presets in the crop window? Perhaps that would work.

Thanks again

EricLNZ wrote on 7/16/2017, 4:52 AM

Cornico - that appears to only work when you drag to the timeline. It won't crop clips already on the timeline (at least not in MS14) so Margaret would need to reintroduce the stills to the timeline?

I don't know why the "adjust source media" doesn't work for her as it does for me if I add true 16:9 to a PAL DV Widescreen project.

vkmast wrote on 7/16/2017, 6:20 AM

Meg, Right-click in the still event P/C window and Match Output Aspect?

margaret-taylor wrote on 7/16/2017, 10:34 AM

Hi thanks for your replies. Cornico - the auto cropping instruction on the Preferences Editing menu did the trick for the whole project and worked for clips already on the timeline. Thanks also to vkmast because this works too. So grateful to all for quick replies.

Margaret