What actually happens when you render to 16:9?

Videot wrote on 7/19/2004, 3:51 PM
What actually happens when you render to 16:9? If I start with video that was shot in 4:3 ratio & set the project to 16:9 I get the impression that all that happens is as follows. You get a 4:3 picture that has been squeezed inwardly to which black bars have been added to the top & bottom. It's then up to your video playback software to stretch the squished in 4:4 back to 16:9. Is this a correct assumption?

Do the black bars top & bottom take part in the actual file size or does the results remain the same 4:3 or 16:9?

Comments

farss wrote on 7/19/2004, 5:38 PM
I would think when you render to 16:9 all that happens is the 16:9 flag is set in the output file. This means the dispaying device will display it at 16:9 if it's able to. If its a native 4:3 device it will have balck bars top and bottom. This doesn't mean anything has happened to your video.

Bob.
ghosty6 wrote on 7/19/2004, 5:50 PM
If you are rendering 4:3 material to 16:9 output, you need to use the 16:9 crop feature in vegas on your source. Or else it will not look right on your TV.
Sidecar wrote on 7/19/2004, 10:26 PM
I just did this.

My goal was to have the show play back on a 16:9 monitor properly--that is, without the image being distorted. If you play a 4:3 show on a 16:9 monitor and set the monitor to fill the screen the image is stretched sideways: circles become flattened--but the screen is full. All the original pixel are displayed, except they are stretched left/right to fill the extra width.

I started with 4:3 material. I selected NTSC DV Widescreen in the Vegas Properties. That set the video monitor window to a 16:9 frame. The Pan/Crop button will already be set to 16:9 format and if it isn't, right click and set "match output aspect." Whatever is inside that crop box is what will be seen on screen.

So what is happening (if starting with 4:3 material) is that you are losing the top and bottom of the frame. Essentially you are enlarging the 4:3's frame width to the width of the 16:9 monitor. Vegas will render out only the part inside the pan/crop box and ignore the rest.

Imaging throwing a 4:3 image with a video projector onto a 16:9 shaped screen. If you filled the screen left to right, some image would fall off the top and bottom of the screen. This has the effect of softening the image--you aren't using all the pixels the original was shot with.

When starting with 4:3 material, Vegas has no choice but to throw some of it away to get a 16:9 aspect ratio.

If you started with 16:9 you would not be losing anything and it ought to look sharper.

I'm going to experiment with a film transfer. The 16mm film is, of course, 4:3 (or so). Using a five-bladed shutter projector to reduce flicker, I'm going to tape it off a matte screen with a DVCAM 500WSL set in 16:9 mode. The video should look as good as it can get. Then when I bring the video into a Vegas 16:9 timeline, it won't have to throw anything away.
farss wrote on 7/19/2004, 10:33 PM
If you want to avoid the unpleasant sidebars with 4:3 in 16:9 one trick is leave the 4:3 as 4:3 but put a stretched and blurred copy on the track below. This is done a lot on local TV with 4:3 material cut along with 16:9 material.

Bob.
tailgait wrote on 7/20/2004, 12:40 AM
I'm doing a project now where I'm shooting interviews with two cameras, one, the PD-170 in 16:9 and the other, my old VX-1000 in 4:3. But I frame my 4:3 picture to have bars on top and bottom. I allow for the 16:9 look. Then when I edit, I just drop a bar on top and one on the bottom of the 4:3 and voila! I have 16:9. I use another TV track and intercut the two. In this manner I don't have to worry about planning to eliminate jump-cuts. It looks really good if you use a wide-angle on the second camera.
Tailgait