How to convert 4:3 to 16:9?

[dc91gt]

I've looked thru the archives on here. but didn't note anything definitive, so i thought I'd ask.

I've got some footage (it's stock footage for a project, 30 second piece) that is 4:3 video.

I'd like to convert it to letter box/16:9, as I think it would give it a nice look/feel.

What is the best way to go about this?

The tools I've got to use are: adobe after effects, combustion 2, adobe 6.5, vegas 4.0 and tmpgenc.

Actually, I suppose just letter boxing it would be fine, since the cable stations it'll be played at still broadcast in 4:3.. so going to a true 16:9 probably isn't needed.

Can I just mask the top/bottom? and does anyone know the proper number of pixels the top and bottom mask needs to be?

I appreciate the help.

-d

[SaSi]

I don't understand why you want to do what you describe.

Letterboxing is a technique to make the whole width of a widescreen movie visible. Since the width is too much for the aspect ratio of the normal TV, black bars are displayed on top and bottom.

With the 4:3 video, converting it to widescreen means you either stretch it - in which case the picture becomes distorted, or you crop lines from the top and the bottom - losing content - and resize it - generating artifacts.

With 4:3 source video, all you can do on a widescreen TV is allow the TV to generate vertical bars to the left and right.

[bmiller]

I have a widescreen tv and have used tmpg.to convert 4:3 to 16:9.
Set the source to 16:9 and the output to 16:9 and it worked ok.I also decided that the tv does a good strech on the 4:3 rendered video,so that's what i use.I'm sure that if the source is 4:3,then all you are doing is adding black bars on a 4:3 tv and stretching the source video.
I don't see an advantage to converting 4:3 material to 16:9 as a widescreen tv will do that for you.There is no more material on the video to access when converting to widescreen.
Brad