Vegas Video AR Question

[revlis]

If i'm editing 720*480 DV in Vegas Video, how would i go about chopping off a portion of the top and bottom to turn it into 16:9....or anamorphic. i'm afraid i'm still in the dark about this. thanks.

[guns1inger]

What actual aspect ratio do you want ?

If you want 1.78:1 (Which is approx. 16:9), then you can add black bars of 38 pixels each top and bottom. However this will only give you matted letterbox, not true 16:9 anamorphic. If played back on a widescreen TV you would get a 4:3 pillarbox image with black bars top and bottom, unless you zoomed in.

If you wan't anamorphic, then you need to crop 38 pixels off the top and bottom, then rezise vertically to fill the screen back to 480 pixels. Then encode and author this as 16:9.

[revlis]

thanks guns1inger.

i'm still a little confused. so if i put black bars of 38 pixels on the top and bottom, and play back on a widescreen tv, i'll still have black bars? and can i take it that it's actually possible to get anamorphic widescreen out of Vegas? or is it kind of a fake version? also, i've searched high and low for this kind of info - is there somewhere i can find more of the info you've given, i.e., how many pixels to cut for different aspect ratios, the different pixel dimensions of the different aspect ratios, etc.?

thanks again for your help.

[mwkurt]

I don't have Vegas in front of me right now, but I know that there are rendering options to convert your video to 16x9. Look at the render settings and choose one of the DVD 16x9 output settings.
Mark

[revlis]

can't seem to find that. i'm using Vegas 4

[guns1inger]

I suspect Vegsa 4 is too old to support 16:9, however it is still possible. Download and install the debugmode frameserver. Resize your video as I described earlier, then save it out using the frameserver and encode with an encoder that can do 16:9 (tmpgenc, mainconcept, cce etc).

OR, encode it as 4:3 from Vegas, then use restream to change the flags to 16:9.

As for aspect ratios - there are only two as far as DVD is concerned. 4:3 (or 1.33:1) and 16:9 (1.78:1) (the spec also includes a 2.35:1, but this is not used or supported by any players). Film, on the other hand, supports many aspect ratios, including 1.33:1, 1.66:1, 1.77:1, 1.78:1, 1.85:1, 2.0:1, 2.20:1, 2.35:1 and even 2.40:1. Anything greater than 1.78:1 (1.77:1 - 1.33:1) is generally encoded as 4:3 to prevent pillarboxing (vertical black bars at the sides). Anything 1.78:1 and below can be encoded as either 4:3 (with appropriate letterbox mattes), or 16:9 anamorphic (also with appropriate letterbox mattes, although these are smaller). How you go about changing your footage, and what you change it to is up to what you want to achieve.

If you have standard aspect footage (say, home videos) and a video screen TV, then in most cases you are better off leaving it to pillarbox, as it won't be framed for 16:9, so any cropping will take people's heads off or cause other issues.