achieving letterbox: crop or magic bullet it?

markcheng

markcheng

Well-known member
so with MB, you can just add the black bars for the letterbox effect. is having the black bars part of the image suggested/recommended? and how does it affect the settings I should use when burning a dvd-r for consumer dvds? My film is done and I'm ready to start selling the dvds but I want to make sure I'm doing it right. Should I instead crop the dimensions in After Effects and tell the DVD software that it's a letterbox 16:9 aspect ratio?

help from you veterans please!!!! (and thanks!)

mark.
 
If you didn't shoot it in widescreen, don't crop. Even if you could get your DVD authoring software to accept footage that is not 720x480 (which with Encore, you can't) you would be in effect trying to have you DVD player play back something that was originally shot with a different pixel aspect ratio, and your footage will get stretched. Hell, even if you did shoot in widescreen, don't crop.

If you want it to look 16x9, there's no reason not to put black bars on it. I wouldn't use Magic bullet though, just a simple .psd or .tga. Here's one:

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/6995/1185923427.zip

The benefit of using bars is you have the luxury of re-framing every shot exactly as you want it.

It all comes down to the settings of your original footage. If the aspect ratio is .9, use the bars. If it is widescreen, you don't have to do anything.

And seriously, reframing your background footage under the bars can bring an entirely new feel to your film. And, it's fun, and yes, I'm being serious.
 
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well MB's widescreen setting seemed to be straight forward for me. after some experiementing with a 4x3 video with black bars embedded in the tops and bottoms, I realized Roxio's MyDVD burned the same exact way regardless of whether i had the software set to 4x3 or 16x9....thanks matt for the info
 
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