So you're saying just blackbar it, right?

My personal opinion, but I hate the black bars. I hated them for widescreen on my 4:3 tube tv, I hate them still for my 4:3 on my 16:9 tv or non-16:9 ratio on my 16:9 TV. It's a waste of screen space imho (we did get the bigger, wider screens to use it, right?)

But just blackbar it in Vegas. I'd say set your project to the desired res, then render out your file to something lossless, put that new 1920x800 file on a 1920x1080 timeline & do it that way.

If you wanted to save space you could render out to the 1280x720 as I'd say the majority of people can play that vs 1080, but I doubt space is that much of an issue for ya.

It's unlikely to save much space since it probably doesn't take too many extra bits to describe the constant black bars over and above the active video if you encode your 1920x800 video into the 1920x1080 legal Blu-ray video standard.

You'll not find a set with native 2.4 (Cinemascope) aspect so the bars will be there whether one encodes them in the video or not.

so, me follow up Q is like, if I make the PROJECT x800, can I simply drop that into DISC ARCHITECT and make a BLU-RAY from it?

Far as black bars go, it's a Movie Thang :)

As stated before, it is better to render to BluRay spec in Vegas so Architect does not render AGAIN. Render your 1920x800 movie on a 1920x1080 DVD Architect template.

It's not really a movie thing, it is an aspect thing. New TV's are 16x9, your movie is 2.4:1 aspect. Since your TV is not that aspect, in order to display correctly, it has to make the width match your TV screen which as a result, the height of the picture will be smaller than the height of your screen, thus you get black bars. But you have to adhere to the Bluray specs, which in this case the closest is a 1920 x 1080 (16 x 9) aspect. If you put your 2.4:1 video on a 16x9 timeline correctly, it will have black bars at top and bottom, thus will display correctly.

Dave T2

I understand. I do want the black bars, because I want the 2.40:1 movie aspect ratio. I'm planning to preview my latest epic at a local theater and hope to use it to compare and improve the look of the video, like it was a real movie. It's NOT, but you get the idea. 2:40.1 and black bars is for me. ( i may end up on 2.35:1 since seems every movie I see uses that ratio these days)
I'm sticking to 1920x1080 for ease of everything all down the pipe. Thanks guys!!

Even if you step up to the full monty DCI standard for cinema it's the same. The spec is a 2048x1080 frame at 24fps or 48fps. For Scope (2.39:1) 2048x858 pixels are used i.e. you still have black pixels.

Bob.

You said BluRay in your first post, now you said you plan to play it in a movie theater.
Apples and oranges, two completely different considerations.

Theater projectors handle 2.40 and 2.35 straightaway from whatever their preferred file format is. I would not take a letterboxed BluRay disc to the projectionist unless they specifically ask for it. A conformed file on a portable drive is usually preferred. So that's one render for BluRay, and another (2K / 2048x858 possibly) Cinemascope display aspect for the theater.