Quick letterboxing problem question?Thanks

daisylady

Hi All,
Would really appreciate if you could help a complete amateur. I need to remove the black bars on either side of the below video. I have set the properties in Sony Vegas to match the media and it gives me 640x480 and I have 4:3 ratio set. It seems if I change the ratio the picture is distorted after rendering. On the above settings the preview screen on Sony Vegas shows no letterboxing.

screenshot


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYjsJ5fu8H0
Any help much appreciated,
Rosie

AnonoBoy

Well Youtube displays in 16:9 so if your media is shot at 4:3 then there's no way around pillar-boxing (unless you want to zoom in and thus lose some of the footage)

I'm not familiar with Sony Vegas but I'd imagine it's viewing window is matching your footage and is 4:3.

Incidentally your screenshot link isn't working so I can't view it.

Average-Ro

It looks like the footage was shot in 4:3 OP, which means the only way of losing the black bars is to zoom in.

But (like AnonoBoy said) you will lose some of the picture and some of the quality. I've done it before myself with 4:3 footage in Vegas, but it was only for a few quick shots amongst a load of 16:9 footage, so I got away with it.

daisylady

Thanks for the replies.
I presume if I were to burn to DVD side bars would still be there?. So is the lesson here always make sure your camera setting when filming is at 16:9?

ScumLord

Was the original footage shot in 4:3, where did it come from? I would have thought the default is 16:9 I've never even seen a setting for changing it to 4:3 on a camera.

AnonoBoy

ScumLord wrote: »

Was the original footage shot in 4:3, where did it come from? I would have thought the default is 16:9 I've never even seen a setting for changing it to 4:3 on a camera.

Older cameras would definitely have an option to change from 4:3 to 16:9 and back.

I don't think a camera will shoot HD in 4:3 but older ones like the Sony Z1 I'm pretty sure would should SD in 4:3.

Average-Ro

Could have also been an older NTSC cam; a lot of them default to 4:3.