• VEGAS Pro

  Letterbox problem in Sony Vegas after rendering

  Posted by Martin Felch on March 28, 2009 at 1:20 pm

  Hello,

  I am relatively new at working with Sony Vegas Pro 8.0b (build 217) so I have a little problem. I’m trying to a apply a letterbox effect to a 800×600 video by making two Video tracks which are above the main video track. The two video tracks are for the upper and down part of the letterbox which is done by Media Generators > Solid Color > Black. The two borders in each letterbox track are positioned by Event Pan / Crop options, so that the black color is seen only at the bottom and the upper part of the screen (in the middle goes the main video track)

  So everything is fine while previewing the letterboxed video – I’ve previewed the video on preview window and on the full screen preview at all possible qualities.

  But after I render the video with the following parameters

  Video Rendering Quality: Best
  Mode: Quality VBR
  Format: Windows Media Video V9 (.wmv)
  Image Size: (Custom – 800 x 600)
  Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1,000 (Square)
  Frame rate (fps): 30,000
  Seconds per keyframe: 3
  Quality: 90%

  and playing the video on several video players I see that the letterbox is crossed by a thin visible line.

  I’ve tried with different rendering formats, but the result was the same. This strange line doesn’t appear at the video preview, but after rendering it appears and it’s very ugly. I know another method for letterboxing (by Sony Cookie Cutter effect > Square), but its border edge is a little softened so I can’t use it.

  Here is a screenshot of the problem:

  https://img256.imageshack.us/img256/9868/sonyhelp.jpg (just copy and paste the link to a new tab / window in your browser)

  Thanks in advance and sorry for my bad english.

  Steve Rhoden replied 17 years, 5 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  John Rofrano

  March 28, 2009 at 2:27 pm

  Is you project set to 800×600? It should be. If it’s not, this is why it looks different in the render from the preview. Set your project to 800×600. Make sure the crop on the generated media that you are using to letter box is correct. Right-click it in the Pan/Crop tool and select Match Output Aspect. Then resize it to go well beyond the edges so that nothing below will show through the edges. This should eliminate the lines you are seeing.

  ~jr

  http://www.johnrofrano.com
  http://www.vasst.com
• 

  Steve Rhoden

  March 28, 2009 at 3:19 pm

  Speaking of letterboxes…Zenote has a letterbox plugin
  that can come in very handy (For me i dont have to go
  thru that extra task of creating tracks above the video
  with black solids and event pan/crop)…
  Although at present the Zenote product line is dead.
  I can only speak of the stability of this letterbox plugin.

  Steve Rhoden
  (Cow Leader)
  Creative Arts Director and Film Maker.
  Portfolio at:
  http://www.youtube.com/hentys

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