Combining video of differing types

[iworshipsatin]

I'm trying to compile a video montage of various movie clips for presentation to a large audience. I'm currently using DVDx to rip a bunch of DVD material I want, but I'm concerned about a few things--

Some movies are in widescreen format and some are in fullscreen. When I go to present the finished product, I don't want clips alternating between wide and full screen every two seconds. Is there any way I can crop or zoom in on the dimensions of entire video clips so there are no black margins?

My biggest problem here is that I do not know of any way to join mutiple videos of varying sizes/resolutions. I searched the how-to guides and forums for information to no avail. I want to make all of the videos into fullscreen format, and of dimensions that will easily allow me to append them together using something like Muitiquence. How can I standardize the sizes (or is it resolutions?) of all my video clips?

Also while I'm at it, what would be the best format to encode to? I'm going to be using a computer that may or may not have certain codecs, so what is my safest bet for making this work? MPEG-1? I don't think these computers have DVD codecs, so that kinda rules out MPEG-2. What about AVI?

Thanks. I'm relatively new to this, so if I'm misusing terminology or confusing the hell out of you, please question me

[BJ_M]

how you will do it will depend on what video editor you use ...

as to the format .. ussually quicktime or mpeg1 is a safe bet . I would go with quicktime but also make a copy as mpeg1 as backup .. try to find out the specs of these computers -- and match your encoding to thier capibilities ..

[iworshipsatin]

ok; is it possible to zoom in/crop using adobe premiere?

if not, what would you recommend i use?

[BJ_M]

zoom in/crop using adobe premiere = yes , no problem .. you can do that with about any NLE , mainconcept and sony have some good products for that also .