Crop Letterbox mixed formats confusion

Shawn Murphy

Shawn Murphy

Well-known member
I've read, I've experimented, I've cropped, I'm confused, I must be missing something really basic....

I think what I have is a timeline with some clips that were shot letterbox mode and some that were shot 4:3, and I just want everything to look the same (16:9) in the final render, but when I apply the crop to 16:9 and play it back, the frame still looks different than the ones that appear to have been captured with 16:9 to start.

The middle frame below has what appears to be the letterbox bars already, how do I get every other clip in the timeline to have the same?

crop-letter-confusion.JPG



Thanks in advance.
 
Don’t worry about what it looks like in the timeline tracks. They don’t show any effects or cropping applied. If it looks all right in the preview window, that’s all you need to worry about.
 
something still isn't right, have a look at this clip, all of the imported files are set to crop(16:9), and yet if you look at the middle section of this clip, the scene where the guy is walking down the sidewalk, those frames look entirely different from the next scene of the train in the background....

http://thegospelofgroove.com/film/crop-letter-confusion.mov

clarification: some of the other scenes are actually .jpg images, so that perhaps explains the size differences, but the two scenes I just described are both .avi files.
 
Jubal28 said:
No QT here.
Click to expand...


Is this some kind of strange political statement? ;-)

I've never heard of anyone involved with music/film/multimedia production not having QT.... *sincerely curious*
 
I saw three different frame sizes going on there ... I'm guessing the smaller square ones that wouldn't fill the frame from side to side OR top to bottom were your JPEG's.

Try this. Make sure your project properties are set to widescreen. Just drop down to the template that works for you. Then, I'd go through ALL of your media you have on the track(s)/timeline, and click on the pan/crop button on each, then right click on the image in the pan/crop window & and choose match output aspect.

Then, go back through and adjust your clips/JPEGs in pan/crop until you have it where you want it in the preview window (i.e. adjust up or down within the frame for the right perspective/view you want, etc.).

Once you're done there, when you go to render it out, choose the appropriate widescreen template for MPEG2, AVI, etc. .... then customize as you need from there. Should be fool proof, if you've been able to make sense of what I'm trying to say.

Hope it helps.
 
Shawn Murphy said:
Is this some kind of strange political statement? ;-)

I've never heard of anyone involved with music/film/multimedia production not having QT.... *sincerely curious*
Click to expand...

No . . . *I* have QT and everything else, but in my spare time, I'm a lawyer who works for a large monolothic corporation, and I don't have QT *here*. I'll check it out later.
 
Jubal28 said:
No . . . *I* have QT and everything else, but in my spare time, I'm a lawyer who works for a large monolothic corporation, and I don't have QT *here*. I'll check it out later.
Click to expand...


;-) comprende!
 
Envision said:
I saw three different frame sizes going on there ... I'm guessing the smaller square ones that wouldn't fill the frame from side to side OR top to bottom were your JPEG's.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's correct about the .jpgs. So, to simplify the troubleshooting, I opened a new project and loaded only two .avi files, one that appears to have been shot letterboxed in camera, and one that was shot 4:3:

Vegas-Letterbox-Attributes2.JPG


Envision said:
Try this. Make sure your project properties are set to widescreen. Just drop down to the template that works for you. Then, I'd go through ALL of your media you have on the track(s)/timeline, and click on the pan/crop button on each, then right click on the image in the pan/crop window & and choose match output aspect.
Click to expand...

The thing is that if I do the 'match output aspect', it appears to stretch the height of the file that was already letterboxed, which basically removes most of the letterbox field so it doesn't look like a normal letterbox:


[normal, imported already letterboxed, without 'match aspect ratio']

letterbox-imported-without-Match-Aspect.JPG


[same file, with 'match aspect ratio']

letterbox-imported-WITH-Match-Aspect.JPG



Perhaps I'm oversimplifying (or better yet, over complicating), but it would seem that if you import a clip that is already letterboxed, and then import a clip that is native 4:3, one would only need change the 4:3 file to 16:9 in the 'Event pan/Crop' tool...


Vegas-Letterbox-Attributes5.JPG


The default dimension of the clip that is already letterboxed has an overall height of 480 (including the letterboxed area) and a viewable image area of ~368.

When I take the 4:3 file and apply the letterbox setting, the height dimension is changed to 368, but in the preview window or when I play back the timeline, the actual viewable image height still appears to be about 480, and when I tell it to 'match output aspect' the height changes to 360, but still appears larger in the preview.


*the camera is the DVX100A
 
I wouldn't worry about how it looks in the preview window as much as I would on how it looks when you've rendered it. Render it, then check it out ... even if you only render a small loop section.

Second, when I look at the images you've posted (man, I wish I knew how to post those), it doesn't really appear any more stretched from top to bottom than the first example ... the first expample doesn't fill the preview window from side to side either.

Long story short, render it & see what it looks like going with my suggestions. BTW, I like your images ... good work.
 
If your settings are at installation default, on a widescreen timeline, you should be able to crop 4:3 footage to 16:9, and it should stretch out to fill the widescreen frame automatically.

HOWEVER, the widescreen footage -- squeeze, anamorphic adapter, etc. -- may not be exactly the same aspect ratio as the cropped footage. You may have to adjust the crop some.
 
Envision said:
I wouldn't worry about how it looks in the preview window as much as I would on how it looks when you've rendered it. Render it, then check it out ... even if you only render a small loop section.
Click to expand...

After rendering it's still the same, when it gets to the second image the picture jumps in size. Oh well, I'm off to a couple of other forums to see what I can find, I'm have to be missing something painfully obvious, I can't imagine that you can't easily mix pre-letterboxed images with standard 4:3, I mean, even if the letterboxed image from the DVX isn't perfect, I can see the basic dimensions in the crop tool and the sizes should be close to identical.

Envision said:
Second, when I look at the images you've posted (man, I wish I knew how to post those),
Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean, but all I do (on a PC) is hit the 'Print Screen' button on my keyboard, open 'mspaint', 'ctrl-v' to paste the screen capture, then use the square select tool to highlight the area I want, then I open a new ‘paint’ window, paste in the small section I selected, and save it off as a .jpg

Envision said:
Long story short, render it & see what it looks like going with my suggestions. BTW, I like your images ... good work.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'd post the whole thing if I could tidy up the dimensions!

Thanks to everyone who tried to help!
 
Jubal28 said:
...HOWEVER, the widescreen footage -- squeeze, anamorphic adapter, etc. -- may not be exactly the same aspect ratio as the cropped footage. You may have to adjust the crop some.
Click to expand...


That's the odd thing, when I open the pre-letterboxed image in the crop tool, the dimensions of the image inside the letterbox bars (~368), and the dimensions of the entire image including the letterboxing(480), appear to be the same exact height dimensions listed in the second image after I apply the 16:9 setting
 
Jubal28 said:
Is that the underside of the Aurora bridge, by the way?
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The crack in the concrete or the footage of the bridge itself? ;-)


Both are the Aurora Bridge, are you from Seattle?
 
fyi: if I only choose the 'match output aspect' for each individual clip, (not adding a 16:9 crop), then the images do match up on output, however, it seems to come at a cost of potentially losing some of the image that is already letterboxed, but, at least everything renders and plays back dimensionally identical! In the future I'll just make it easy on myself and not use in-camera letterboxing!
 
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