Letterboxing and pillarboxing

We recorded a concert with three DV cameras running in parallel. All were shooting in 16:9. The material from two of the cams is just fine, but when I import the stuff from the tapes of camera 3 (a Panasonic model), it comes in letterboxed in 4:3 format. When I insert the clips into the timeline, they are pillarboxed, so now I have a black frame around the picture. I can fix that by blowing up the picture to 133 percent size, but that makes it fuzzy.
The cameraman told me that could be fixed by changing some setting on importing. The only option I found was to check the "anamorphic" option, but that just streteches the video and doesn't get rid of the black bars at the top and bottom. Any ideas?

You can't fix it when you capture. The material was not shot anamorphically, the material was shot with letterboxing. Some cameras let you select either letterboxing or anamorphic. If that was the case with this camera the wrong option was selected. Some cameras only allow letterboxing. Your scaling solution is the only way to fix it, and it's not a great solution as you've seen.

Similar Messages

What exactly is the auto letterbox and pillarbox option?

Can't find any reference to that preference in the help file. Can someone define exactly what that option does?
I'm guessing its affecting a project I'm working on. I just imported about 40 minutes of footage from a mini-DV camcorder. The person who shot it must have turned on one of those fake widescreen effects in the camcorder because the footage has black bars on top and bottom. Anyway, after the tape was finished importing iMovie put up a status box stating: "Letterboxing - Please wait this may take a while." Well its been about 2 hours now and its still not finished. I'm not even sure what the heck its doing.
Thanks,
Chris

What issue?"
That is what I am asking...Like I said, I am able to open CS5 on my new retina mbp and edit image files with no issue..the only thing that I notice that seems off is the text of the UI seems "fuzzy"....
So, what I am asking is what exactly is the problem supposed to be that I should be seeing?

Letterbox and widemail stopped working with Mail on new QuadCoreI7 MacBookP

I just received my new MacBookPro Quad Core I7 (Wow!) and after finding Rosetta was not installed and fixing that, I now back to Mail disabling either of the current bundles (10.6.5 is what both developers are showing). The computer is running 10.6.6 as is my previous MacBookPro. I've checked the info.plist on both bundles and on mail.app and find that mail's SupportedPluginCompatiblityUUID list includes the same values as found in the bundles (so the old fixes won't work). When mail starts it immediately disables the bundle and complains about them not being current

Although designed to re-enable GrowlMail, I successfully employed this hint for both Letterbox and WideMail:
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100823103751355
Best,
Steven

Final Cut Pro 7 - Letterbox and stretched picture from ****! HELP!

I've edited and saved hundreds of projects without a Letterbox and stretched out picture. All of a sudden I edited and save this project and I can get rid of the letterbox. PLEASE HELP! It's awful!

You are editing HD video shot in HDV anamorphic 16:9 on a Standard Definition 4:3 timeline.
Is this your intention? FCP is scaling the video to fit in the 4:3 aspect ratio - hence the letterbox.
If this is not what you want, you need to create a new (empty) sequence. Go to the menu File > New > Sequence. Drag a source clip of your footage to the new sequence, and you should be prompted by FCP to match the sequence settings with the source footage. Click yes and you should now have a sequence that matches your source footage and the letterboxing should be gone.
To save your existing work in the letterboxed sequence and move it to the new (correct) sequence, do the following:
Remove the clip you used to set the sequence settings on the new sequence so that it is empty.
Return to your incorrect sequence and click anywhere. Type Command + A to select all the clips. Type Command + C to copy them.
Switch to the new, empty sequence and click anywhere in it. Type Command + V to paste all the clips to the new (correct) sequence.
If the video does not display correctly in the new sequence, click anywhere on the timeline of the new sequence. Once you have done that, type Command + A to select all the clips.
Control-click on anyone of the selected video clips, and from the drop down menu choose "Remove Attributes"
When the Remove Attributes pane opens, check the boxes for Basic Motion and Distort (if they are not grayed out) and then click OK.
You should be good to go.
MtD

Letterboxing and Aspect Ratio problem

I'm authoring a feature film DVD. All menus and movies are 16:9
When I play the Simulator in "16:9" everything is fine.
When I play the Simulator in "4:3 Letterbox" my menus are letterboxed as desired, however every movie is for some reason squished into 4:3.
Any ideas?
The Video Asset box in the Inspector tells me all my movies are 720x480 16:9.
All tracks show in the Track Inspector as display mode 16:9 Letterbox.
All Menus show in the Menu Inspector as Aspect Ratio 16:9
Also of note, one of my tracks is used both as a movie and as a motion menu. Although it's the same track, with the simulator in 4:3 it's correctly letterboxed as a menu, yet squished as a movie!
I exported from a 16:9 Anamorphic project in FCP (as a QTmovie set to Anamorphic NTSC DV) and imported straight into DVD Studio Pro. (I've noticed on these forums most people go through Compressor. I didn't. Would that be the cause of my headache?)
The movies display in my QuickTime Player as 16:9 clips with a size of 853x480

The Simulator is very far from accurate. Burn a disc, then pop it into a DVD player.

Mixing "letterboxed" and "squeezed" footage in the same sequence

This is a good one. All footage shot on a DVX100, which has 2 ways of getting widescreen: squeeze and letterbox.
We shot 2 tapes worth of footage three weeks ago using squeeze for widescreen. I have since made a rough cut of all that footage.
Today, we shot the remaining scenes, but they were shot letterbox for widescreen (due to a communication errore between myself and the DP).
We discovered this halfway through shooting today, and decided to keep shooting letterbox because it will be easier to convert the squeezed footage to letterbox than vice versa.
Oh, and the squeezed footage is all outdoors, the letterboxed all indoors, so matching isn't an issue.
My question(s) is (are):
How would you deal with this (reshoots are out of the question)?
Is there a simple way to convert the footage I've already edited without losing the edits?
Is there a magical fix that will fix it without any effort on my part? (just kidding about that last one)
Thanks!
Jason
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Thanks for the tips!
What is your final output hoping to be? Do you need
anamorphic enhancement? (ie. you're outputting to
DVD, or for display on a 16:9 monitor, or for film)
It will be on DVD ultimately, but projected digitally for the premiere and possibly sent to festivals. It just needs to be widescreen, enhanced or not.
I take it your existing sequence is 16:9?
Yes.
If so...
1. Open a new 4:3 sequence in the timeline.
2. Drag your existing 16:9 sequence into the 4:3
sequence but don't let go of the mouse
3. Press and hold the Command key, then release the
mouse.
4. The contents of your 16:9 sequence should
now be inserted (as letterboxed clips) into the 4:3
sequence
I'll try this when I get home.
Or, when you meant 'convert the footage,' where you
talking about the source files?
If it's as easy as those steps, great! However, the two formats need to output to DVD together. I assume this will simply add more render time to that end?
I don't care about the source files if I can ultimately output it harmoniously.
Thanks again!
Jason
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

CS4 and pillarboxing 1920x1080 AVCHD to 16:9 DVD NTSC

I'm new to Premiere CS4. I'm using Canon HF11 30p MTS files, so I'm using the 1080i30 (60i) settings.
I Import my AVCHD files. When I try to use Adobe Media Encoder CS4 to downsample the 1920x1080 AVCHD to 16:9 DVD NTSC or DV I get pillarboxing on the sides of the DVD file. I don't in any of my other video editing programs. Why do I ONLY see this in Premiere, and how can I fix it? I've never seen a video editor not 'stretch' the video to fill the entire 720x480 'screen' with the correct aspect ratio played on the TV.
I read about and already understood apect ratios:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/PremierePro/4.0/WS03BF7479-8C7B-4522-8C75-210AD102524Ea.html#W S9058AE69-455C-49c2-AD1B-35DA227B376Aa
And this sounds like it's about my problem but doesn't help since the MPEG2-DVD setting in AME doesn't allow me to choose square pixels:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/325/325883.html
Here's the output showing the pillarboxing:
Here's the source tab:

For CS4, Adobe "fixed" the non-square pixel aspect ratios to conform to BBC and Orange Book standards. For years Adobe apps have had the wrong PARs. It's now been fixed across the entire suite of Adobe applications. The technical solution involves Production Aperture, Clean Aperture and more math than I care to review.
If you'd like to try to get your head around it, this link may be helpful:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tvbranding/picturesize.shtml
The bottom line is that what you are seeing now is correct.
-Jeff

Letterboxing and subtitles

i recently shot a scene using the canon xlh1. it was shot in hd at 24. the material was captured usiing the kona 2 card and the sequence has been edited using the dvcprohd 1080i60 settings. the final format for the scene is DVD.
i have a few questions related to workflow, and i would appreciate feedback.
1. i would like to preserve the 16:9 aspect ratio and use letterboxing. is this something that i need to do in FCP or is it something that i do in dvd studio pro? what settings do i need to use?
2. the material is in spanish and i need to create subtitles. again, is it best to do this in FCP or in dvd studio pro?
3. which codec/settings should i use when i export the material? i'd obviously like to use a codec that preserves the quality of the video...
thanks in advance for your help.
paul

2. the material is in spanish and i need to create subtitles. again, is it best to do this in FCP or in dvd studio pro?
Subtitles and captions are handled differently so you need to be sure what you're really after. The subtitle tracks in DVDSP are fully explained in the manual. If you create them in FCOP, they get burned into the video and placed where ever you want them to be, in the letterbox or in the video area. If you create subtitle tracks in DVDSP, they can be turned on or off by the user.
There are closed captioning tools for FCP, google is probably how you're going to find them. And there are captioning services that can do this for you which is often the best solution if you are working for a client who has specific captioning requirements for different release media.
bogiesan

Is it possible to change the letterboxing or pillarboxing colors in iMovie?

I haven't found a way to do this yet, is it possible?

Yes. I will try to explain what i did. I added a background from the 'maps & background' library. I then added a picture above the background so that they are connected, the picture above the background - the picture has a small blue connector symbol touching the background. I then clicked on the picture and chose the 'cropping' icon and set the style to 'fit'. I then clicked on the the 'video overlay' icon. In the video overlay settings i chose 'picture in picture' and i manually set the 'disolve' to 0.0 seconds. I could see the picture in front of the background so I clicked on the picture and then stretched out the picture until the top and bottom of the picture was touching the top and bottom of the background. there were centering lines that appeared to help me center the picture over the background.

How do I un-pillarbox 4:3 material broadcast in 16:9?

In widescreen (16:9) digital TV broadcasts, source material which was originally 4:3 is simply pillarboxed. Is there any way of removing the pillarboxes to revert it to a 4:3 DV without losing resolution?
Using Quicktime to convert 16:9 material to 4:3 results in a shrunken letterboxed-and-pillarboxed 4:3 video (ie a 4:3 video with a fat black border around the whole thing).
Are there any third-party products which can help?
Thanks for any clues....

You can use MPEG Streamclip to Zoom into the pillarboxed video. Check "Interlaced Scaling" if the material is interlaced (or if you are unsure if there is ANY interlaced material there) and deselect it if ALL material is progressive.
Here is a related link but you'll have to modify the settings for your purpose.
And you do lose some quality because you are just upsampling and cropping the video.
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/SVCDon_aMacintosh.html#43-169

I am using the old imovie HD on my old Mac laptop... it works fine, but when I export a video to YouTube there is a black frame around it.. how do i get rid of that? thanks!

I am using the old imovie HD on my old Mac laptop... it works fine, but when I export a video to YouTube there is a black frame around it.. how do i get rid of that? thanks!

Hi MyAppleID99,
You may want to check to make sure the clip hasn't been moved back and forth between wide screen and standard aspect ratios; sometimes a combination of letterboxing and pillarboxing can lead to a black frame "windowbox" when playing the final video. You may find the following article helpful:
Apple Support: What are Letterboxing, Pillarboxing and Windowboxing?
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2320
Regards,
- Brenden

VHS - DVD Recorder - PC - Premiere Pro CS6: Workflow Questions

Hello,
I hope I have this posted in the correct place. I am seeking advice and suggestions for VHS tape to digital transfers. Here is my current workflow:
VHS tape is played back on a Panasonic PV-D4744S VCR and is recorded directly (via composite A/V cable) to a Panasonic DMR-ES40V DVD recorder and onto a DVD-R, -RW, or +RW.
The disc is then copied into a Windows 7 folder with all of the contents of its VIDEO_TS folder intact; this folder is saved on several external hard drives for safe keeping.
I then open and import a copy of the .vob files into Premiere Pro CS6, where I minimally scale the video to eliminate the distortions (“VHS tearing”) on the sides and bottom of the VHS source video. The result is a very clear video which fits perfectly in a 4:3 project window on my 16:9 HD computer screen with minimal pillarboxing.
It is at the stage of export where I am stuck.
The final DVDs are going to be viewed on a 16:9 widescreen TV, as well as on an iMac computer. I’ve read all much about interlaced scanning (VHS, Laserdisc, TV) and progressive scanning (computer, LCD TVs), but I’m still not sure if I can make a DVD which will look proper on both TVs and computers. In addition to the scaling, I am using Premiere to add chapter makers and poster frames to the video, which I wish to then export to either Encore CS6 or NeroVision – I love Nero’s animated 2D and 3D menu selections. What export settings should I use in Premiere which are closest to the original, imported .vob files? I’ve exported some test videos in MPEG2-DVD format to folders, but they are huge compared to the original DVDs made on the standalone recorder, i.e., 12.8GB on Premiere export compared to the 4.7GB import.
Are there settings to make the Premiere export as close to the original DVD import of 4.7GB without sacrificing quality? Should I simply import the sequence into Encore as a timeline and let it perform the heavy lifting of automatically compressing the files to fit on a 4.7GB DVD? NeroVision seems to not accept the MPEG2-DVD files; it “sees” only the .m2v video files and not the .wav audio files.
In a nutshell:
I want to take a raw DVD-R (or -RW, +RW) recorded on a standalone and copy to hard drive, add chapter markers and minimal scaling in Premiere Pro CS6, then export and burn a DVD that will look good on both a 16:9 TV and computer screen.
I'm trying to get this project finished for a soon upcoming family get together. Any suggestions, tips, and general advice would be greatly appreciated.
Eric

Hi Eric,
The issue I would have with the workflow is that DVD is heavily compressed for delivery - not meant for re-compressing again. You're re-compressing a file that's already been compressed as small as can be. Most DVD recorders have different quality settings, like 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours. Use the 1 hour mode on the DVD recorder to get the "best" quality source if you must re-edit the stuff. The typical workflow would be to have some sort of capture device on the computer that records a larger, less compressed file to begin with.
As for export from Adobe using Media Encoder, choose "MPEG-2 DVD" of course, and select "NTSC DV" for the preset. Under the VIDEO tab, you'll need to adjust the encoding bitrate according to the video length. A good rule of thumb is to use 560/minutes=bitrate, and I will round down a touch for safety margin. This assumes Dolby Digital audio on the DVD (AME exports .wav audio and Encore converts to Dolby). Note that most folks don't go over 7 or 8, for best compatibility (the max limit is a bit higher, but quality of VHS source is not going to get any better anyway at higher rates, GIGO).
Regarding audio for the DVD, could be that Nero expects ONE file with audio and video. In AME, look under MULTIPLEXING and change from NONE to DVD, this will combine them. Then under AUDIO, choose DOLBY or maybe MPEG will work for you. Use a 192k bitrate for audio if going that route.
Note sure what you meant about the 16:9 screen - would recommend against putting the 4:3 source material into a 16:9 sequence in Premiere in you are, this will do more harm than good. Stay with 4:3 throughout, including the DVD creation - the DVD player and TV ought to know what to do with it. You're actually REDUCING the resolution if you use a 16:9 workflow. Note that if you encode a 16:9 DVD using 4:3 material in the 16:9 frame, and then play that DVD on a 4:3 TV, bad news - it gets letterboxed AND pillarboxed and you end up with a small video surround by black on all sides. Not cool.
I'd stick with interlaced - if you deinterlace the footage at any point, you are essentially throwing away HALF the resolution, which is weak to start with for SD. Most software players will have Preferences settings to let you tweak the playback/deinterlacing at that point, and TVs will handle it fine.
PS - if you use Encore, then just export the .m2v and .wav files using Media Encoder, import both to Encore, and Encore then does NOT recompress the video any further (as long as it fits), only the audio gets the Dolby conversion. Do NOT use Multiplexed files in Encore.
Hope this is all helpful
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

Converting into widescreen

i wonder if you guys could help me out with something on imovie 6??
i want video footage from my canon ixus 65 camera to be in widescreen in a movie project.
according to imovie help as long as im importing it into a movie that is set to widescreen it will convert automatically.
this doesnt seem to happen and its driving me up the wall!!
obviously this is from a usb connection as there is no firewire.
any help would be awesome!
joe

I understand that this is a very old post, and you are probably not watching it anymore. Furthermore, you have probably gotten an answer. But my understanding is that if your camera shot in 4:3, iMovie will detect the format as 4:3 and will import it as 4:3. If you have iMovie set as a Widescreen project, that only means it will place "pillar bars" to fill in the width.
This is NOT, I don't believe, the same as having the "automatic letterboxing and pillarboxing" preference checked.
It appears that you were expecting the footage to import by filling the screen with your footage by chopping the top and botton, and this does not happen.
Hope this helps someone.
Clyde.

Problems with the display resolution on Android

We have a problem with the display resolution on our Google Nexus 7 (2013) and our Multi-Folio-App. If we watch an article inside our published Multi-Folio-App, the article does not use the full screen of the tablet. But when I look the article inside the content viewer, it use the full screen of the tablet. For your information: We use the resolution of 1280 x 800 and the tablet has the highest resolution of 1920 x 1200.
However, under iOS it works without problems. We use the iPad 4 (2048 x 1536) with the article resolution of 1024 x 720. Do you have any idea what we can do? Under this post, you can find two screenshots which discribe the problem.

Scaling was introduced in v28:
from http://helpx.adobe.com/digital-publishing-suite/help/whats-new-release.html#what_s_new_in_ this_release
Content on Android devices scaled up
In previous releases, smaller renditions in Android apps were not scaled up, causing both letterboxing and pillarboxing. With v28 AIR-based Android apps, smaller renditions are now scaled up proportionally.

Suggestions for Authoring 16:9 & 4:3 Content ?

Hello -
I am putting together a compilations DVD -- I have 16:9 and 4:3 content. I am struggling with how to present the content so that a 16:9 television and a 4:3 television both display their respective native formats correctly. I have been toying with a couple ideas and wanted to know if anyone had suggestions:
1. Put each segment on its own track (20 to 30 short segments) -- either 16:9 or 4:3 -- and use scripting to generate a "play all" sequence. Upside is that I only have to have one copy of each track on the DVD; downside is I have to deal with a lot of scripting and I am not sure how well this function.
2. Create two duplicate "feature length" tracks; one track in 16:9 (with the 4:3 content with "black boxes" on the sides) and one track in 4:3 (with the 16:9 content "letterboxed"). Downside to this is I need double the capacity and, also, I am not sure if forcing 4:3 content into a 16:9 frame best.
These are the two ideas I have -- am curious if anyone has tackled this particular problem and, if so, what kinds of advice they may have.
Thanks,
Damon

*Set the aspect ratio on your tracks:*
With anamorphic 16:9 content, you can let the players do the letterboxing and pillarboxing for you. Simply put 4:3 and 16:9 content on separate tracks, and set the aspect ratio for each track in the inspector. I usually choose 16:9 letterbox for my 16:9 tracks. This way, there is no need to provide additional alternate versions of your content.
*Use stories as an alternative to scripting:*
If you want to create different "playlists" from tracks consisting of several segments, you may be able to get all you need done with Stories. It easy to create a story from a track, rearrange its markers, and provide an alternate end jump (like to the next "play all" story).
*Welcome to the world of widescreen:*
Something I have observed is that some DVD players do not automatically pillarbox 4:3 material on a 16:9 display. I have a Panasonic that stubbornly refuses to do this under any circumstances. The point is that since the display aspect ratio is handled by the player, There can be setting on the player can override choices you make in authoring. Viewers must correctly set up their own player's settings for correct playback of material in different aspect ratios (though generally, very few players require custom setup this way).
*Design widescreen menus for pan & scan:*
Something else you may consider if you are designing menus is to design widescreen menus for pan & scan display. Pan & scan will crop the sides for 4:3 display, allowing the menu to remain at full-frame height (not letterboxed). This simply requires keeping all of the menu content in a 4:3 title safe are in the middle of the 16:9 frame. Sometimes I'll use a screen grab of the FCP preview window with the title safe area and drop it into my photoshop file as an overlay or a reference for guides.
Hope this helps:
Max Average

Letterboxing and pillarboxing

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