aspect ratio

[NoahK]

I've explained precisely how to make a 720p video into something with black bars on top and bottom in just about every possible way. I never said you can't do this in 720 I just said I wouldn't recommend it and then I explained why and exactly how to do it anyway. Here's my exact guideline just in case you somehow missed it:

I wouldn't recommend doing this for broadcast but for web it would be ok. Basically you'd just increase the vertical size of the sequence a bit to make an area appear beyond the frame boundary. Your 720p footage is essentially 1280x720 (well technically 960x720) but that's another story. So increase the vertical resolution say to 1280x1000. That would give you some extra black areas at the top and bottom of the frame. Then you could drop in FCP text generator titles to fill those black areas. When you're done, export to QuickTime Conversion with the H.264 codec.

For broadcast 720p you're kinda out of luck because it has to stay 1280x720 in order to be a proper broadcast signal. So you'd either scale the clips down say 80% which would give you black bars at the top and bottom but unfortunately also at the sides- which looks weird. Or you could add a widescreen filter which would crop the shots off at the top and bottom, essentially covering up parts of your frame. A third option would be to scale and then use the aspect ratio slider in the motion tab to widen the footage out to fill the sides again. But this will look really weird. In short- do this only if it's a QuickTime for your desktop/web.

Bottom line is if you really want a 720p video with black bars you either need to cover up part of your frame with a widescreen filter or scale it down to make room- nothing else you can do there. So what part of my suggestions don't work for you? "They just don't..." is not an answer.

Noah