Letterboxing an widescreen format

I turned on letterboxing in imovie. I am editing and burning widescreen/hdv video. I have automatic DV pillarboxing and letterboxing on, but it doesn't put the black bars on the top and bottom when playing on a 4:3 tv. I thought it would do that? instead, it looks stretched.
Is this correct or can I get it to play right on a normal TV?

Hello Kingstone,
iDVD doesn't set the IFO file contained in your DVD to display the video as widescreen on a 4:3 TV. You should be able to solve the problem by changing the settings of your dvd player.
if you want to have the DVD display as letterboxed widescreen automatically you can create a disc image in iDVD and then re-author it with myDVDedit.
http://www.mydvdedit.com
hope this helps
mish

Similar Messages

Locking the 16:9 Widescreen format?

If I had a 16:9 Widescreen video placed into iDVD properly, with a widescreen menu too, is there a way to "lock" the widescreen format so if a person watched my dvd on a 4:3 tv (standard tv), they would see it with a letterbox, no matter if the dvd player was set on PS (Pan and Scan) or Letterbox? In other words, can iDVD preserve the widescreen format so that it CANNOT be cropped on a dvd player? When I used iDVD 06, I created multiple widescreen dvds which I gave to friends, however, they complained that the video seemed cropped and the text was sometimes cut off. I assume they had their dvd player set to PS (Pan and Scan), which crops a 16:9 video and makes it 4:3, thus cutting off the sides. I like the multiformat of iDVD, especially when my widescreen dvd's actually play correctly on a widescreen tv, however, is their a way to lock it widescreen for a 4:3 tv, and keep it widescreen for a 16:9 tv??? Thanks, gategoer

poke01
The usual drill is to set the project preset to match the properties of your source media so that the program is directed to set up the right space in the Edit area monitor for editing purposes. So, if you have 4:3 format, then your project preset would probably be NTSC DV Standard or it PAL counterpart.
But, under the circumstances, look at this idea....
Open your Premiere Elements 12 project to the Expert workspace and make sure that the project preset is the default 1080i30
NTSC
AVCHD
Full HD1080i30
or its PAL counterpart
Import your 4:3 video into the project with Add Media/Files and Folders/Project Assets from where you drag your video to the Expert workspace Timeline.
Click on the screen so that you see a bounding box around the image there and drag on the bounding box handles to scale the image just to display in the screen with no black borders.
Publish+Share/Social Websites/YouTube with preset = High Definition Video for YouTube 1920 x 1080.
What does that look like once it is uploaded to YouTube 16:9?
The idea goes against the grain if you are starting with 720 x 480 (or PAL counterpart 720 x 576) and taking it to 1920 x 1080. But see if you can get away with it.
In your scheme of things, are black borders acceptable. What I am asking you to try ends up with 16:9 with no black borders. But I am not too comfortable with the SD to HD.
Please review and then let us know the outcome.
In questions such as these, please give properties of the source media.
Thanks.
ATR

Widescreen format on purchased movies

I am running Apple TV through a 42" Lowe TV using the 1084 HD setting. The format I normally run on is letterbox and the TV allows multiple types of widescreen format. When I play my movie purchased through iTunes, I cannot override the format using the TV, yet the movie itself is stretched vertically, as if you were watching standard pan and scan rather than widescreen. Any quick fix?

Try hitting MENU and + on the Apple remote for 6 seconds. This should allow you to cycle thru the display resolutions. See if one gives the picture you want. Does the Lowe's have a native or maximum setting you can set before for selecting the input the TV is on.

How to record iSight video in widescreen format

Does anyone know the answer to this? It seems bizarre that although when recording video in iMovie the video window itself is in 16:9 format, the actual video is still in 4:3. Are there any video settings that i've missed? It's driving me nuts.

HD2600 Hater wrote:
Does anyone know the answer to this? It seems bizarre that although when recording video in iMovie the video window itself is in 16:9 format, the actual video is still in 4:3. Are there any video settings that i've missed? It's driving me nuts.
You can crop the 4:3 clip to fit the widescreen format:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iMovie/8.0/en/11603.html
Mac Pro Quad Core (Early 2009) 2.93Ghz w/Mac OS X (10.6.3) MacBook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009) 2.26GHz (10.6.3)
LED Cinema Display G4 PowerBook 1.67GHz (10.4.11) iBookSE 366MHz (10.3.9) External iSight

What is the best setting for export movie in widescreen format?

Please tell me what is the best setting for exporting movie in Widescreen format?

Like in After effect we use "NTSC D1 Widescreen Square Pixel".,
Carefully examine the codec and pixel dimensions of that output file. That's certainly easy for an experienced VFX person like yourself.
Then carefully look over the presets in FCP to find the same attibutes. You can also use the online help system for FCP and search for "D1"
However, your question remains unanswerable because we don't know how you're getting to the monitor. What are you playing back you AE sequences on that displays them on your LCD? You're assuming we know what you're doing and, I assure you, we do not.
bogiesan

Widescreen Format custom preset in Compressor 4?

I used to do HD (16X9) format only, but ever since I saw other views, especially really cool looking cinematic music videos carrying the widescreen format I've been wanting to apply that to my videos. Currently my only known solution to this is simply making an image that fits exactly on my frame with two black bars to letter box my 16X9 videos in FCPX. I tried making a custom preset in Compressor 4 with the dimension of the video set to 1920X800 which is exactly 2.40X1 in aspect ratio. I also turned the pixel aspect ratio to sqauare but the results still looked weird. The video was simply squished down with a large black bar at the top and the dimension of the video was still 1920*1080.
Enough with the rubbish (I'm not good at explaining things). Does anyone know how to formuate a custom preset in Compressor 4 so that when I export from FCPX using Compressor presets the file would be natively 1920*800 and that the excess pixels are trimmed away automatically? Or is there an option in FCPX itself that allows me to set the aspect ratio of my video to widescreen in the first place?
Thanks for the help in advance!

Thanks for the suggestion, I tried to export a clip with a black JPEG file from MPEG Steamclip at 1920*800 24fp, but when I put it in my timeline in FCPX the video option window droped down saying that the format is not recognised and forced me to use the presets the came with it. Any other solution?
Thanks
Damon

N96 - Taking pictures in widescreen format

Hi all,
i have Nokia N96 mobile and want to know whether there is any way to take the pictures in widescreen format. Now by default all the pictures are of aspect ratio 4:3. But, if there are any settings or any additional softwares, plz let me know?
Thanks in advance,
Freak.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

You can edit the pictures and crop them to achieve your desired aspect ratio.
640K Should be enough for everybody
El_Loco Nokia Video Blog

Video Is In Widescreen Format -- HELP!!

Yesterday, I offered to convert a digital videotape of an Easter play into a DVD. That was before I found out the guy who recorded the play did so in widescreen format.
I currently have iMovie 4 on my iMac. When I imported it, the video looks very stretched (which I thought would happen). Is there any way iMovie 4 can import a widescreen video, or is it time to get iMovie5 (or 6) for something like this??
Please help ... Thanxx!!
Ryan

It's time to get iLife '06 (which includes widescreen capable versions of iMovie and iDVD).

16:9 widescreen format question

How do I create a project so my video will be in 16:9 widescreen format? I am using Premier Elements 12. As of now my videos are in 4:3 format when I upload them to Youtube.

poke01
The usual drill is to set the project preset to match the properties of your source media so that the program is directed to set up the right space in the Edit area monitor for editing purposes. So, if you have 4:3 format, then your project preset would probably be NTSC DV Standard or it PAL counterpart.
But, under the circumstances, look at this idea....
Open your Premiere Elements 12 project to the Expert workspace and make sure that the project preset is the default 1080i30
NTSC
AVCHD
Full HD1080i30
or its PAL counterpart
Import your 4:3 video into the project with Add Media/Files and Folders/Project Assets from where you drag your video to the Expert workspace Timeline.
Click on the screen so that you see a bounding box around the image there and drag on the bounding box handles to scale the image just to display in the screen with no black borders.
Publish+Share/Social Websites/YouTube with preset = High Definition Video for YouTube 1920 x 1080.
What does that look like once it is uploaded to YouTube 16:9?
The idea goes against the grain if you are starting with 720 x 480 (or PAL counterpart 720 x 576) and taking it to 1920 x 1080. But see if you can get away with it.
In your scheme of things, are black borders acceptable. What I am asking you to try ends up with 16:9 with no black borders. But I am not too comfortable with the SD to HD.
Please review and then let us know the outcome.
In questions such as these, please give properties of the source media.
Thanks.
ATR

Shot in 4:3 aspect ratio, but when i capture it turns to widescreen format

I shot my footage in standard 4:3 aspect ratio, and when i import it the clip looks fine, but when i drag it to the timeline it goes into widescreen format, and i can't figure out why it is doing this. If i select the clip from my browser window and play it in my viewer window it plays fine in the 4:3 aspect ratio, but when i drag it to the timeline it goes to wide screen and it stays that way. Please help

Sounds like your sequence settings are off. If you hit command>0 (zero) you should be able to change them. One way to know they are off for sure is if when you drag your clip to the timeline you get the red line above it meaning it needs rendering. You should never have to render if your sequence settings are right.
In sequence settings make sure all your settings match the format of you clip. Frame Size, Pixel Aspect Ratio, Editing Timebase, and compressor. That should do it.
You could also just use the Easy Setup to change the whole project to match DV.

Getting footage to play in widescreen format

I am having trouble getting my projects to play in a regular 4:3 tvs as widescreen format.
On my old mac there was no problem
I want to import my footage and then output it to play in 16:9 format.
Is there new set ups thtat i need to configure?? in fce4
any direction would be greatly appreciated.
everyone looks like they are taller than they really are... all appears well in timeline but once on dvd it shows in a stretched tall format on the 4:3 tv....shows fine on widescreen tv.
TIm

1 cam is standard and my Sony is HD...sorry for the delay,
So I understand it as --as long as I shoot in hd i am ok.right
What use is it to shoot in stretch then? any?
Tim
you are a great help by the way..

Maintain DV widescreen format when copying iMovie project back to tape

Using iMovie HD 5.0.2 and copying a project back to tape via the camcorder, but the 16:9 widescreen format gets squeezed into 4:3 ratio. Not sure if this is fixable. In the Preferences, I turned off the auto pillarboxing under Import, but did nothing as I suspected. In Playback checking Play DV project video through to DV camera also yielded no change.
Any suggestions? Thanks.

hi Daniel:
Here are a couple of ideas..
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43000
http://www.danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/usage/5020.shtml
Also, read this discussion -especially the great list that Bengt has given:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=960184&ft=y&#960184
Sue

Trouble maintaining widescreen format when combining clips

I made a demo reel from three of my movies. I made the first movie in non-widescreen format (4:3) in iMovie 6. The other two I made in widescreen (16:9) in iMovie 9.
I was able to rip (using a product called Cinematize) one scene each from a burned disc of each movie and combine them--one after another--into one iMovie 9 Project. But then I noticed that the movie playbacks seemed odd--rather than two of them being in 16:9, they all were in 4:3.
I called Apple Support and they said that you can't combine formats the way I want to. They said that if one of the clips is 4:3, the rest will automatically be formatted that way.
But I still want to do this--keep the two 16:9 clips in that format. Does anyone have a workaround? Thanks.

Try this:
Open the slideshow.mov in QT Player Pro and export it as a DV stream with the 16:9 flag set. Then import the .dv file to a widescreen iMovie project.
Then iMovie should treat it as 16:9.
Hmm... what is the frame rate of the .mov? The .dv should use the same fps but it is fixed at ntsc 29.97 or PAL 25 fps for .dv.

In widescreen format, my camcorder captures as 4x3 letterbox. Help!!!!!!!!

I want to make a widescreen video.
My camcorder (Panasonic NV-GS17) is set to cinema mode, on screen this appears as 4x3 letterbox.
I read up on the whole widescreen thing and learn that it is probably something called anamorphic widescreen but when I capture it in FCP, it's quite obviously 4x3 letterbox that's coming out of the camera.
I'm able to take this into the sequence and stretch it to 133% to get the right effect but this is a bit of a hassle.
How can I capture the video from my camcorder, into FCP and have it automatically crop and stretch the video to the correct format.
Andy
(p.s. I'm very new to final cut pro)

Ok, when I use log and capture, I see a 4x3 letterbox image, that's using Firewire PAL or Firewire PAL basic. To clarify, I see a normal (almost square) shaped image, with a black bar at the top and bottom.
When I switch to Firewire PAL Anamorphic, the same image appears but this time squished and distorted with even thicker bars at the top and bottom.
From this I can tell that the video is actually coming out of the camcorder as 4x3 letterbox, i.e. the camera is taking the normal image and placing a black bar at the top and bottom.
I know that this way I am losing a whole tonne of quality and that anamorphic would be a much better way to go, but my camcorder won't do anamorphic and I'm not going to spend money on a new camcorder or an anamorphic lens adapter just yet.
Now I've worked out that I can edit my entire video in this 4x3 letterbox format and at the end, create a new sequence as anamorphic , drag in the sequence I've created and zoom it to 133%.
This will work fine for me (I don't mind about the lack of quality, it's just a hobby). However, I would of course prefer to be able to capture the video with letterbox removed and converted to full PAL anamorphic this way it would be easier to work mix and match with genuine anamorphic at the same time as footage from this non-anamorphic camera.
It seems odd, surely this problem quite common with low cost camcorders, I would have thought that final cut pro would be prepared for this sort of thing.

Discontinuation of Widescreen Format

Hello All, I did a search on "widescreen, letterbox, discontinuation, original aspect ratio, etc... and found null,zip, zero. I have been an ardent supporter of home video programming shown in the original aspect ratio chose by the director and cinematographer. I was among the early adopters of laser disc so I could see the wonders of films as the director envisioned it. I was pleased and quite frankly amazed when LBX/WS/OAR (letterbox, widescreen, original aspect ratio) films first showed up in Blockbuster, and then became the accepted norm! I thought the uninformed public, who felt they were being cheated by those "horrible, distracting black bars" at the top and bottom of the screen, had finally realized the benefits of films in their OAR. Recently, the HD channels of HBO/Cinemax/Encore/Starz stopped showing >95% of films in their OAR, reverting to the criminal "cropping"(a.k.a. "panning and scanning") of the image to completely fill the screen. Is anyone else outraged by this? To the people who just can't get past those "annoying" black bars: I am assuming 90% of the people who shell out the outrageous amount of $$ for HD programming have 16:9 AR televisions, and have various zoom functions in the video controls menu. Accordingly, these people could reduce and/or eliminate the black bars if they chose to do so. If that floats your boat, so be it. However, I have no magic button to switch from the butchered, cropped versions back to the OAR image. This elimination of OAR programming, to a true videophile and lover of cinema such as myself, is nothing short of criminal. Is there anyone else out there that shares my indignation? Let me be clear-- I make no judgments on the people who insist on watching cropped versions of films. However, I feel I should have the choice of being able to view the OAR version if I choose to do so. This discontinuation, coupled with the incessant repetition of certain films for months on end have really detracted from my FIOS experience, which has otherwise been great. I realize Verizon can only pass along the feed it receives from HBO, but I simply can not understand why HBO et al chose to revert to the panned and scanned format, and also why there is no widespread outrage about it. Am I alone here? What, if anything, can we do? ( The last question is purely rhetorical in nature...) Give Me OAR Or Give Me Death, MacReady

Boy, do I agree 100% with MacReady 100%!!!! However, there has been some outrage about it, particularly regarding the new EPIX channel, which has cropped IRON MAN, INDY 4 (and all the INDY films), and any newer film.. (Old films are OAR on EPIX because those masters already existed prior to cropping.) Movies are also ruined OnDemand (which is why I almost never use that service). Paying $6.00 for a cropped film is no bargain.. This reprehensible practice was initiated by HBO and I'll probably be dropping HBO because I'm just sick of paying for a channel that has such contempt. both for the films and the viewers. In addition, some filmmakers hate this as well, but it is usually out of their control. (Here is a link to director Steven Soderbergh's view on this:
http://www.dgaquarterly.org/BACKISSUES/Summer2009/InMyOpinion/tabid/720/Default.aspx
Unfortunately, aside from conveying subscriber's displeasure at this practice, there is little that Verizon can do about it. All we can do is let the channels know how we feel. But don't expect much. HBO, in particular, is notorious for not giving a **bleep** about what subscribers think about anything!

Letterboxing an widescreen format

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for