Saving my edited movie in 16:9 or 4:3

[GGuyZ]

Hi guys.

I've managed to learn sony vegas and create my very first edited clip. Today we are going to present it in a birthday party, on a very large LCD 16:9(widescreen) tv screen.

I have used many types of sources, but chose the edited movie to be 720x576 resolution(for PAL DVD). Vegas seems to handle the mixed material fine. However, my question is - can I encode the complete clip to be suitable for widescreen without distorting the picture?

Is it possible to encode 2 versions - one for 4:3, and one for 16:9?

I would appreciate your quick reply, since we are presenting this today.

Best regards, and thank you once again for your tremendous help.

Guy.

[guns1inger]

You have left your run very late for this type of decision.

Short answer is yes, but not today. You can easily select the output aspect ratio, however if your source material is 4:3, going to 16:9 without distortion will take some effort. You will have to use Even Pan and Crop and Track Motion to correctly crop and resize your video for 16:9 output. If you simply crop and resize to produce a 16:9 frame there is a good chance you will also chop off peoples heads and get strangely framed shots.

If your source material is 4:3 you are better off outputting as 4:3 for the moment and letting the player/TV add the vertical bars up either side to hold the true aspect ratio.