Quality for a 4:3 to 16:9 project conversion?

hackazoid wrote on 1/1/2008, 9:21 PM

Did do research on prior posts for this topic but would appreciate some advice as I'm not sure I have it right. Issue is that my wife complains about how she looks when we watch my 4:3 DVD on a widescreen TV.

Obviously I can change the Vegas project to widescreen but then I have the black bars on each side.

Stills... can crop in Photoshop so they fit with original quality.

Videos... if I use track motion and adjust such that I fill the screen, is that the video equivalent of PS still cropping? Saw something from Spotted Eagle that suggested no resolution was lost.

If that is true... then for the stills on that track, is it like a zoom such that their quality is as about as good as cropping in PS? That would save a lot of time as I can use event pan & crop to show the parts of the pics which I need. [using that right click & 'match output aspect' tip I read about]

Going forward, I know to shoot in widescreen. Thanks for any help so my wife can enjoy the show! :-)

Comments

farss wrote on 1/1/2008, 9:50 PM

If you watch a 4:3 DVD on a widescreen TV it should look correct. That is you'll have black bars on the side. If you're not seeing bars on the side then your TV and/or DVD player are setup incorrectly.

If you want to convert 4:3 footage into 16:9 then you are forced to crop parts of the frame from the top and bottom and you will loose 30% of the vertical resolution in the process, regardless of how you do it, either in PS or Vegas. If you're starting with stills where you may have more resolution then the loss maybe completely irrelevant. I've done several commercial 16:9 DVDs from stills and it look superb but I used the stills at native res on the Vegas T/L and used Event Pan/Crop to match the aspect ratio.

If you want to use 4:3 footage in a 16:9 project and simply leave it as 4:3 i.e. have the black bars 'burnt in' on the sides there would be a minor loss of horizontal resolution but it'd be much less noticeable than cropping it to full frame 16:9. You can even do a little of both to something like 14:9 in a 16:9 frame. One can also fill the black bits of the frame with a variety of things if the black gets too boring. One old trick I've used is to duplicate the media to a lower track, crop it to 16:9 and apply some GB. If you want to get really artsy you can feather the edges so the 4:3 melts into the blurred 16:9.

Bob.

Spot|DSE wrote on 1/1/2008, 9:53 PM

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/training/howtutorials/f/post/7368.html has the tutorial on how to do this in a variety of methods, aside from the excellent advice Bob dispensed.

hackazoid wrote on 1/1/2008, 10:34 PM

Thanks, cool stuff.. I did see this at a different link. Was trying to stay with the full screen (TV has aspect control options so I stretch it) vs watching the original with black bars OR using the pillar box fill. But, do like the photoframe look--is there a tutorial for that?

I guess I'm trying to ask if the 'filled frame' (see below--copied from the tutorial) avoids the stretching distortion by cropping & thus only has a quality loss like when you zoom in via pan/crop. I note the "no resolution is lost" comment at the end.

If this is true, then the track motion approach can be a bit of a shortcut as I'll only need to use p/c to focus on the areas I want. I do that for stills anyway to create motion.

Does this make sense? Thanks.

Filled Frame
This is another technique that works, but again affects the resolution of the image, much the same way as Pan/Crop does. With the same project open and same media on the timeline, open the Track Motion tool and size the image to fit the entire frame. This may involve some slight stretching as you can see in the image below but again, it's a viable tool and may work for your particular needs. The image is stretched long and squished vertically in this preview, but no resolution is lost.

farss wrote on 1/2/2008, 2:08 AM

Well first if you use the TV to stretch a 4:3 image to fill the 16:9 frame then no wonder the good woman is complaining, unless she is built like a broom stick it's far from flattering. One of my coworkers will happily cause a scene in restaurants and bars if they've got a 16:9 TV setup like that.

What is described at the bottom of your post sounds much the same except you're 'cooking' it in, it might work for some kinds of images such as motion graphics where there's no real sense of what is right anyway but for most real images unless I'm misunderstanding what's being said I'd avoid it. Not only will people be short and fat but cars will have oval wheels.

About the picture frame thing, if you care to drop me an email I'll send you back a project that shows you how to do it.

Bob.

Chienworks wrote on 1/2/2008, 4:25 AM

I would stick with Pan/Crop instead of Track Motion whenever possible. The problem with Track Motion is that it resizes to fit the shape first, then stretches to fill the frame. This can cause more resolution loss than you want. Pan/Crop does the resize as the last step, preserving as much resolution as possible.

craftech wrote on 1/2/2008, 5:02 AM

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/training/howtutorials/f/post/7368.html has the tutorial on how to do this in a variety of methods, aside from the excellent advice Bob dispensed.
===========
Nice one Doug. That's just what I have been looking for.

Thanks,

John