16:9 source to 4:3 viewing

[Mike Kujbida]

I’m puzzled. Your source material is 16:9 so why are you bothering to render to 4:3? Just leave it at 16:9 and your problem goes away.
BTW, because of the different aspect ratios (widescreen = 1.2121 and normal = 0.9091) there’s no way to get around your problem. When you try to fit 16:9 source into a 4:3 project, assuming you’re doing a “stretch to fit”, you will lose the side information.

[Sdjeff]

Thanks Mike,
I think that I’ve solved my problem. I leave everything alone until I render the video. I’ve created a custom rendering setting based off of the DVD architect 4:3 setting. It will basically keep the height to width ratio, squeezing the 16:9 video to fit the 4:3 layout. The letterbox borders are larger due to the shrinking of the video. Normally I keep everything 16:9 for my personal projects.

I guess I would need to do a little explaining about what I do. I am a civil engineer for a contractor. Amongst other things, I do a video report of project milestones and events. My videos are more for documenting than creativity. Most of our clients have the fancy update to date technology gadgets in their conference rooms for presentations but the average employee has only access to at a work station with turn of the century equipment (4:3 television monitors with DVD players in this case.) I record the video in 16:9 because it is the future of video, and in the future maybe everyone on my distribution list will have 16:9 capabilities.
Jeff

[Deirdre O’lavery]

Hello, I have a similar issue.

I have edited a film that is by default widescreen. recently a cable company kicked it back to me because they didn’t inform the client that it needs to be 4:3 without letterbox for their needs.

What is the best way for me to convert my wide to fullscreen in Vegas? I know there will be some stretching but I’m looking for the best possible quality and retaining the integrity of the image so it doesn’t look vertically squished or skewed.

Thanks you,

Deirdre

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

There are only two options, and both of them result in losing portions of your image. One way or another, you’re going to lose screen, if you don’t want letterboxing.
1-Crop the image from wide to 4:3 aspect ratio. This will result in the least amount of resolution, but a full third of your screen is going to disappear, so hopefully you framed for television.
2-Pan/scan. You’ll still crop as above, but will follow the action using pan/crop to keep the action centered.

You could of course, use Track Motion to fit it all in, but then your images will be squeezed.

[Deirdre O’lavery]

Thank you!

It’s such a pain and I didn’t frame for TV in mind. I have successfully cropped it and the quality doesn’t look too terrible, but I’m sure there will be some framing issues they will just have to live with.

Thanks again =)

~Deirdre

[Sdjeff]

Use Track Motion and lock the aspect ratio of horz to vert (ie if you change the horizontal size the program will automatically compute and change the vertical size to keep the same ratio of hor/vert before and after). Use 640 x ??? I can’t remember right now because I haven’t done a project in a while and I’m at work. Most people that I know still have the fullscreen tv sets. I’ve done quite a few dvds using the track motion method and it seems to work fine.