Letterbox question

[Ben Holmes]

Peter

Would help if you were a little more specific.

I will assume what you mean is that you want to create a ‘fake’ widescreen letterboxed version of a 4:3 video – not that you are interested in anything to do with anamorphic video.

Assuming you have a single video file of your completed edit, the simplest thing to do is to crop your video in a new timeline, setting the top and bottom crop to a sensible figure. The extent to which you can do this will depend on the point at which you start cutting the heads off your subjects. FCP will achieve this in real time on most systems, making this a quick solution.

Not very nice though – video and film should be shot how you want it framed ideally.

You may want to check out the FCP forum at Creative Calf – It gives better advice on simpler problems.

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[Jeremy Garchow]

Use the widescreen filter in FCP or create a still in AE or photoshop and drop that on top of all of your video.

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[Boyd Mccollum]

You should nest your sequence(s) before applying the widescreen filter or the matte. You’ll also need to go through your individual clips and recompose shots to make them work with the new aspect ratio (moving the picture up/down, zoom out a little, etc.).

Boyd
“Go slow to go fast”