"What are you watching the render file on" (computer, monitor, output to camera, etc)?"

The usual PC stuff, Windows Media Player, VLC. Virtual Dub doesn't show black letter box but still squeezed to 4:3. Usually never have a problem. Dropping render back into Vegas, and it looks fine within VP8 preview.

Still perplexed...

I don't think your "uncompressed" render template is seeing the widescreen flag.
A rather common occurence in my experience, not just with Vegas.

Try a couple of different visually lossless codecs and see if the problem goes away . . .

Lossless codecs on 1-second test renders: tried Alparysoft, Huff 2.11, Sony YUV at same values as .veg, no go. Blackmagic 8-bit 4.2.2 never rendered, just showed error-on-output message.

The only one that kind of worked was one that shows Windows file Properties of compression: "Huffyuv" : it came out at right pixel ratio but with top-bottom black bars/letterbox in Virtual Dub, but top-bottom and left-right letter box in Windows Media Player and VLC. Will try to figure out what I chose for this, but it's still not rendering correctly (there should not be any letterbox).

I also went and tested an earlier version of this .veg and rendered the same clip to see if the new .veg maybe got corrupted. But it's doing the same thing.

I'll keep testing, but this is getting weird and a nuisance. It all should be accurate WYSIWYG output when project and render have identical resolution and pixel ratio. Progressive or not (field order has nothing to do with image ratio -- or at least, shouldn't :)

Oh, and last but not least, I obviously need this to work correctly for final output, yet I also need to make crisp and accurate intermediate "work files" to bring back into Vegas for more editing, etc. such as masked and FX intensive scenes.

I make your template (took the USA 1440 one & changed it to progressive), plopped some footage on there, rendered to AVI uncompressed, and it worked just fine.

Widescreen & all. Unless you have a 1440x1080 widescreen monitor you WILL have letterbox. Most PC WS monitors are 16:10, not 9, but even if the pixels don't match perfectly you can still get a slight letterbox.

Geeez, I feel I'm being dense here, and I apologize in advance. But back to what I said: "It all should be accurate WYSIWYG output when project and render have identical resolution and pixel ratio."

Why should monitor have any influence? FYI, I use double non-16:9/10 Widescreen LCDs with desktop stretched across both.

Example:

--- One makes the project in some odd size, let's say for end result as 800x150 Flash banner. So .veg file is 800x150, one edits, finishes, makes uncompressed/lossless output. One should have an 800x150 .avi that one then converts to SWF/FLV and--voila, banner made at exact desired size.

--- Both the .avi* as well as the Flash files should look as intended in their respective players. (*.avi should look right at least in Virtual Dub). Played at full or reduced size in such players should still be proportional to 800x150, irregardless of monitor/desktop resolution that is 1:1 (shows everything else online and otherwise correctly).

Yes, no, why not?

If yes. wouldn't this WYSIWYG apply to basic HDV? Input 1440x1080, project 1440x1080, output 1440x1080. End of story -- or it should be :)

it all looks like the output for me. I've done tons of oddball frame sizes & it always looks like it should.

but many players automatically override, or let you manually override, how it looks. It's easy to setup a 16:9 file to stretch to 4:3 in a player.

Did you bring them back in to vegas to see what vegas thinks?

"Did you bring them back in to vegas to see what vegas thinks?"

Yes, as I stated above" "Dropping render back into Vegas, and it looks fine within VP8 preview."

missed that.

then it's the media players, not the file. Vegas just uses the attributes the file has. If it's showing up widescreen in vegas the file's widescreen. I use media player classic, give that a try.

I just updated my Media Player Classic, and like all the other viewing modalities/players I mentioned, it reflected the same problem. The only place it doesn't occur is when rendered file is put back into Vegas.

Maybe I have some codec gremlin messing with me :)
I'll hopefully figure this out in due course...

No gremlins and the source of your problem has already been explained. Most media players do not respect non square pixels.
The answer therefore is very simple. Render to square pixels e.g. 1920 x 1080 with Pixel Aspect Ratio = 1.

Bob.

Thanks, Bob. Pointing to problem leaves perplexity in place.
You offered a solution, I'll apply and see whud happens.

Thanks :)

Your original post contains the answer!

Template: Custom (1440x1080, 29.970 fps)

You have 1440 x 1080 pixels in the recorded image.

Pixel Aspect Ration: 1.333 (HDV 1080)

Each one of the 1440 pixels should be stretched by 1.333. That will give a screen width of 1920 pixels.

The player (VLC, WMP etc) may not do what it should i.e. stretch the 1440 pixels to 1920 pixels. Result is tall skinny people and in a frame that's exactly 4:3. ooops, it's all wrong.

Generally video editing software such as Vegas will correctly read the data from the file and stretch the pixels if that data is there. Sometimes it's not, sometimes it's wrong. Many players simply ignore it completely or can even get it half wrong. VLC can be told how to present the video via the various settings. For output to players where you're uncertain what they'll do square pixels are generally goof proof. That does not mean you must always use only square pixels whilst editing but you need to consider that what we edit with and what we output for viewing more often than not are not the same.

Bob.

MPC can read the AR of the file. I just opened up a m2t & mpc says it's 1440x1080 16:9, which is correct.

But I can right click on the MPC window & turn off the ability to use the file's AR.
right click -> video/frame -> keep AR should be checked to use the file's AR. If you change any of the pan/scan options you need to set it back up to use the file's AR w/o doing any changes itself.

Thanks, Bob.
More info to chew on.

Bottom line is that for now, I just want to be able to output WMV or MOV or FLV files as final result since my stuff is mainly for online viewing--as usual. As long as the viewer sees as-intended, I don't mind noodling around wtih pixel ratios in project files or elsewhere, etc.