Letterbox Question/Problem

[M1CEtro]

Hey guys,

I'm using Sony Vegas Pro 10 with NewBlue FX. I'm trying to letterbox a music video I just shot. I'm really seeing two options here. I can apply a letterbox filter and select "Fit Frame" which basically maintains the aspect ratio and squeezes the picture more towards the center. I don't like the way this looks though because then the pciture looks horizontally stretched out. Or I could not check fit frame (or use the event pan/crop button) to pull down the black bars over the original clip. But then this cuts out parts of the shot and I feel like this takes away from the "big picture" that I want to show. When watching music videos on youtube, many of them are letterboxed without looking stretched out or cutting out pieces of the clip. Am I missing something here? Is there some aspect trick that I can do to fix this? Or do I just need to make sure I am shooting a wider area on the day of recording when I know I want to letterbox. That way I cut out what is not intended to be seen?

Thanks

 

[qazwsx]

Right now your best option is to crop each shot independently so you can decide what parts get cropped off. Ideally, while shooting you should use guide markings of the aspect ratio you want to frame your shots on your camera monitor. Alternatively while shooting, you can use anamorphic lenses or adapters to give you a wider AR as well.

 

[David Jimerson]

What's the aspect ratio of your footage? And why do you want the letterbox bars?

Once you crop you can usually move the image area up and down. But if things you want in your image are too far apart, there's not much you can do if you want that wider aspect.

 

[clang]

A lot of letterboxing you see in music videos is fake, in that it's really just black bars placed over the footage or other cropping. Nothing wrong with that in itself, you can have a lot of fun cropping frames or even applying artificial aspect ratios to stretch footage. And Vegas does it very well and very easily...