Rendering 4:3 footage as 16:9 widescreen?

organism_seven wrote on 10/11/2002, 5:09 PM
Hi,

Can anybody provide me with a guide on how to render 4:3 footage as 16:9 widescreen using Vegas, producing mpeg files suitable for transfer to DVD?
Basically, I want to be able to watch my old footage on a widescreen television, which will fill the screen proportionally correct, and when viewed on a standard 4:3 TV it will appear letterboxed.
I realise that cropping will occur. Thats no problem.
Will I have to use the zoom function on the Widescreen TV to watch this?
I did see something about this awhile ago.
Something about having to use Track Motion to create a 720 x 432 template, but I can't remember all the details.
Can anybody instruct me on the right way to do this?
I am based in the UK, so we are talking about PAL.
Thanks for any help offered.

Regards
Organism Seven

Comments

seeker wrote on 10/12/2002, 1:29 AM
Organism Seven,

I realise that cropping will occur. That's no problem.

It could be a problem. You are going to be chopping off the top and bottom of your frames. If you do that arbitrarily, that cropping could very well be wholesale decapitation of your subjects. I think you will want to do some judicious "pan and scan" cropping of your 4:3 footage to convert it to 16:9 footage.

You will probably want to keep most, if not all, of what you have in the horizontal direction, so it will be more "scan" than "pan". But you could conceivably want to crop something from the horizontal, which would then require some additional resampling to achieve the necessary 16:9 frame size.

I think you will need specific Vegas instructions for doing that pan-and-scan cropping. That means you will need to do custom cropping on every clip. For the best results, this is not something you can automate. You will need to make the decisions as to what parts of the images you can best do without. Otherwise, just cut off the bottoms of the frames, with the idea that it is better to cut off feet than heads, but knowing that for some scenes that will not be your best choice.

I am not a Vegas expert, so I will leave it to others to provide the specifics for making the conversion. I will be interested in doing the same thing with my NTSC 4:3 DV footage when we eventually get a widescreen TV, so I will be watching this thread with interest.

-- seeker --
organism_seven wrote on 10/14/2002, 7:08 AM
Not exactly much to monitor on this thread!
Oh well, I'll just try experimenting a bit.
I will let you know if i have any interesting results.

organism_seven wrote on 10/15/2002, 7:34 AM
Hi,

I actually managed to find the guide that has been provided here before.
I don't have the name of the person who supplied this, but a big thank you anyway.

Guide to converting 4:3 footage to 16:9 format using Video Vegas 3.0c:


You will have to create a custom 720x432 template (in Event Pan/Crop settings).

Start with the PAL Standard (NOT Widescreen) 720x576 template in Project Properties (that's Properties in the File menu, or the correct button above the preview window).
Import your AVI file and place it on the timeline.
In the preview window you should get a normal 4:3 picture.

Now you have to select the custom 720x432 template (in Event Pan/Crop settings), the one you have created yourself. You should now see two black bars in the preview window, with a 16:9 picture in between.
The top and bottom of your original 4:3 picture should be covered by the black bars.

Then you select Project Properties again and change the height to 432 so the black bars disappear in the preview window. Just change the height to 432, don't change anything else.
You're then left with a 720x432 16:9 (non-anamorphic) preview window.

The following step can actually be omitted, but it's easier to follow what's going on if you do it anyway. Again select Project Properties and this time select the PAL DV Widescreen (720x576) template.
Now you should get a stretched (anamorphic) preview window.

So far so good?

With VV3, all you have to do now is render to MainConcept MPEG-2, using the DVD PAL template, but before you start rendering click on Custom and set Aspect Ratio to 16:9 Display.
While rendering the preview window remains anamorphic.

In the Render As window, select the following:

Save as type: MainConcept MPEG-2 (*.mpg)
Template: DVD PAL

But before you click on Save, don't forget to click on Custom and set Aspect Ratio to 16:9 Display! Then click on OK and then click on Save.

Loading the finished files into PowerDVD to see if it detects the file as
being in the 16:9 format. It should be!


Do NOT use Windows Media Player. It shows the MPEG-2 file in 4:3 anamorphic format. PowerDVD should switch to 16:9 automatically showing your video in true widescreen dimensions.
If you have your graphics output signal hooked up to a normal 4:3 TV at the same time it should be displaying in the letterboxed format.

All of the above instructions work fine for me, except.......I also have to render the files in progressive mode ( not interlaced ), because I kept getting strange "fringing" artifacts when fast motion occured on-screen.
Perfect in progressive mode, though.

Regards
Organism Seven