Real Youtube Widescreen

rodypolis wrote on 4/17/2009, 8:47 AM
Since youtube is on widescreen now I've been trying to get my rendered vids on widescreen. WMV is the only format that is the size and quality I need, but it won't render real 16:9. I tell it not to letterbox, but somehow it still does it.

I render it in 720/480. that is widescreen right? but the video never comes out long enough to fit youtube's screen. it always have two bars at the side. please help

Comments

Terabyte wrote on 4/17/2009, 12:29 PM
I have the same problem. Are your videos really 16:9 in the raw footage? If not, it appears that Vegas will not render a 16:9 video. My camcorder has a 16:9 mode, but it's really just 4:3 letterboxed. MovieMaker and Roxio will render a real 16:9 video from that so that a DVD built from it defaults to 16:9 without black borders, but it appears that Vegas won't send that format type to YouTube as YouTube is expecting 720p resoluiton or higher. Reall does make for ugly YouTube videos and Sony needs to fix this, IMHO...
Eugenia wrote on 4/17/2009, 3:02 PM
Use this guide for HD:
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/11/09/exporting-with-vegas-for-vimeo-hd/
And if your footage is DV, then use again the above tutorial, but change the resolution to 872x480 and bitrate at 2500 kbps, everything else is the same.
rodypolis wrote on 4/17/2009, 7:16 PM
ok I'll try that. thanks both of you
sibeliusfan wrote on 4/22/2009, 7:30 PM
First, as has been mentioned, your raw footage needs to be 16:9. I've seen quite a few YouTube videos which use fullscreen footage (from their fullscreen camcorder or whatever) and stretch it out so it fits widescreen, because they think it "looks better" to not have the black bars on the right and left side of the frame (which is what is normally going to happen with all fullscreen video on YouTube). Stretching out fullscreen so it fills widescreen results in the "fat face syndrome" where everyone looks squashed down and stretched out sideways. No one should do this. It's completely idiotic. (A few of us argued with one YouTube tutorial guy who said that it didn't matter and it "looked fine" to him to stretch out his face. Good heavens, some people are oblivious!)

You can do a custom frame size in Vegas with WMV. If your camcorder makes widescreen footage, then you can export as 16:9 by choosing HD (720x1280) with square pixel aspect ratio (this will show up by default I think), or some other smaller widescreen resolution, like 856x480 or 768x432. Any of these will give widescreen WMV for YouTube. And of course you need to set up your project to be widescreen, and (again) confirm that your source footage is supposed to be widescreen.

Oh, and 720x480 is *not* really widescreen, not if it's saved with square pixel aspect ratio (which is what you want for YouTube). 856x480 would be correct (or one of the other frame sizes I mentioned above).
rodypolis wrote on 4/23/2009, 6:45 AM
hey thanks man. that really helped. and my camera films in 16:9 but I was having problem rendering it right.