Custom crop / video size

[andrewgerm]

Good day everyone

I have a very specific request for a video, to be output for a website.
The source is NTSC 16:9 (720x480). They want a custom deliverable, of 320x240, but, they want it custom cut.

It's a short clip of someone talking, framed centre, and they want this cropped in on the sides, but not top of bottom, changing the video from a landscape layout to a portrait, and removing the white space left and right.

I've messed about with the cropping, and custom rendering. Vegas sadly doesn't have a tool for highlighting a box area and cropping (like a photo program would).

Any tips on how I can best do this, maintaining the correct aspect for the footage that remains (i.e. so it's no stretched) while still achieving the desired result?

Thanks in advance

[jagabo]

Handbrake has cropping by the number of pixels at each edge:

[andrewgerm]

Brilliant
Thank you for pointing me to that!!

I have 2 versions of the videos rendered out, one as a normal render, and another with the video cropped (but leaving black borders where it has been masked). I can then just crop the masks out.

Will give it a try. Thank you!!

[smrpix]

In Vegas you can easily make a 320x240 project then resize and reposition the footage to fit.

[andrewgerm]

Thanks again all
Going to try the Vegas route first, as it will keep the workflow a bit simpler.

I might have to do an interim render though, as the source seems to almost be anamorphic.
It's coming in as a 4:3 file, but that's very compressed horizontally, and once I stretch it to 16:9, all is fine.

[jagabo]

All DVDs are anamorphic. 720x480 is a 3:2 aspect ratio. It either holds a 4:3 or 16:9 display aspect ratio picture. With PAL DVDs the 720x576 frame has a 5:4 aspect ratio. The picture contained therein is again 4:3 or 16:9 display aspect ratio.

[andrewgerm]

Thank you all who submitted replies!!

I managed to achieve the desired result solely in Vegas.

I imported the media (which looked like 16:9 in a 4:3 file, so looked squashed) into a project with the correct settings, in order to get a proper base video to work off. Once the image was displayed correctly, I applied custom project settings, and then used pan / crop to get the desired framing, and rendered out to a custom template.

[budwzr]

This thread highlights why Vegas is so user friendly. You can skin the cat 10 different ways. Smrpix's suggestion of using the project settings as a resize tool is an excellent approach. You could have used TrackMotion to do the resize too.