Widescreen matte not using event pan/crop

stephenvv

stephenvv

Well-known member
I want a fast rendering way to create a 2.35:1 widescreen matte for print to tape without having to event pan and crop thousand of clips.

The only way I can think is a Photoshop matte overall project but that's not that fast to render. None of Vegas' built in effects seem well suited. If one does work, just being able to slap on a video master track as effect would be great.
 
Add a video track at the top, fill with solid white generated media, crop it down to size (unclick stretch to fill frame) then set the composite mode for the track to multiply mask. Not sure how well it will work with print to tape, but that's how I do it.
 
Sure, that would work but I'm thinking that may slightly reduce quality, interfere with other color corrections, effects or composites below.

I really would like a simple matte at the master video track level - just black and alpha or similar. I wonder how hard it is to create a Vegas plug...
 
However, if you're masking 4:3 material and trying to render it as widescreen when you print to tape, that method will cause problems.
 
Well, I do think it will cause the layers below to get an additional rendering pass, but Vegas's codec is pretty solid. However, it does caused problems with effects. Any effect applied at output will cause unwanted issues - you simply cannot use most global video effects using this method. That's why I want a method that works at the video output stage.

Here's an example. This is simply color bars with the matte done exactly as you describe. Then I added a Magic Bullet for Editor Max Diffusion at video output. I also applied at a black Sony Border effect at video ouput so you can see the edges created by Sony Border are clean (the vertical border on the side and ignore the Magic Bullet but Magic Bullet applies to the multiply matte.

1185201021.jpg
 
Why would you want a border if you're cropping (or matting) the footage?

Anyway, apply the effects to the TRACK and not globally, and you should solve that problem.

In any case, if you're using Magic Bullet, there's most of your render time issue -- not the matte overlay.

But the bottom line is, if you don't want to crop all of your clips (and all you really have to do is crop one, copy it, and then paste the event attributes on all the others simultaneously -- do this before you add any FX, of course), then you're going to have to deal with trade-offs with other methods. TANSTAAFL, as Heinlein would say.
 
This was just to illustrate the problem. The border is just to show the problem clearly - and that matte/crop effect applied globally are not affected by CC.

If you have a project with lots of tracks under short deadline (say 48 Hour) or something you would be able to quickly tweak for a client (a commercial for a client that you have a number of versions on the timeline), applying effects (and changing them) to each video track (say you have 15 video tracks) is tedious, slow and prone to error.

It could be just a simple contrast effect applied on output. However, this will cause the black bars to wash out from pure black. Any method that relies on a composite mode track or a alpha crop track means you cannot use most master video track effects. And I use them often.
 
OK. Makes sense.

Then your only options are the black bar overlay track, or to crop all of your clips. There's really no other way to do it.
 
Finally I find a related thread! I had to go through nine pages of threads and you know how slow that can be when there is so much good stuff in the Vegas section.

I too have a similar problem but not quite... so I decided to revive and hack this thread so log as Stephenvy has no use for it and doesn't mind :D

My problem is similar but not really... I do't want to create a 2.35 aspect but merely avoid cropping by cheapo TVs like my JVC which chops off at all four sides. I was thinking of using the Track motion tool on the video tracks and simply "zoom out a bit" till the DVDs would play with the intended framing by the DP as opposed to this horrible creation of bad TV manufacturing. However I can't do this without ruining the Track motion already in the timeline.

So I was thinking about:

A. Rendering lossless and then doing what I described above.
B. Asking you guys for a better way :D
 
Looks to me like you are using the widescreen overlay on standard screen footage. Was the mask made for a 16x9 timeline?
 
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Yeah, that's what I'm doing. How would I edit the .psd document to mask the top of standard footage?

I don't like shooting in letterbox (or croppping in post) for the loss of resolution factor, so I shot in standard, composed for 2.35:1 and wanted a set of bars to overlay over it, as Matt shared.

Would there be an even better way of doing this, because I have been trying to find a solid workflow for the goal I've just mentioned.
 
I just downloaded and looked at the overlay and it looks like it is formated for standard screen already. You could try to crop and tell it to match output ratio, but my guess is that could mess up the 2.39:1 ratio. Or open the psd file in photoshop and edit it, but again I'm not sure that would do to the ratio....or why it's displaying that way.
 
So what would everyone say is the best solution for achieving the 2.35:1 ratio in Vegas? If cropping is out and the bars that Matt posted require shooting letterboxed and not color correcting, what's the best way to go?
 
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