Widescreen & pillarboxing

After importing movie clips into a new iMovie 6 project set as DV Widescreen, the clips showed up as widescreen. But when I hit the edit button, it went thru a long process of pillarboxing down to 4:3. After saving and reopening the project, 2 of the 8 clips were widescreen, while the other 6 were pillarboxed. (Of course, I intended widescreen).
Checking the project's package contents, it shows those 6 clips as "clip 01-box01.dv" etc., while the 2 widescreen clips are just .dv. The trash contains xclips of the same 6 clips as .dv, but they are also pillarboxed.
What's happening here? Any ideas on how to reclaim the widescreen clips? Thanks, Ron
G5-Dual 2.5 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Hi,
I am new to forums but searched through as much as I could to find a solution to my -similar- problem but didn't find any, so:
problem: when I want to import footage in 16:9 from my Sony DCR PC1000E (PAL), create a new project, choose WIDESCREEN DV, iMovie opens a project in 4:3
I have tried everything, switching auto pillarboxing on and off, creating the new project first and then switching on the camera - creates the right 16:9 project , but as soon as the camera is on switches to 4:3 and squeezes the picture again -, I resetted the camera, nothing helps.
Interesting though, if I open an old project with properly recorded 16:9 footage, I can record new 16:9 footage into it without any problem -just not inte a newly created project.
Interesting too: trying to close the last wrong import tryout, iMovie tells me that some clips are in the iMovie trash. When I reimported them they suddenly appear in the right 16:9 ratio, BUT -I thought 'fine, I continue from here'- iMovie doesn't recognize my camera anymore and after the project name it says '(DV-NTSC-Widescreen)' so not PAL which my camera has....?!?!
History: I have imported lots of 16:9 footage properly until I yesterday imported an older DV tape in 4:3 in seperate new projects. It seems that iMovie has hung up to that.
Might it help that I reinstall the last iMovie update (I already have) 5.0.2 ??????
Can one do that without any problems?
Any help is greatly appeciated
G5 1,8 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Similar Messages

IMovie Noob - Should I Update?

I just started using iMovie 3.0.3 with my new Pana mini DV camcorder. Everything works fine, just wondering if I should update and which version would be best for me? I'm using iDVD 4.0.1 on a different Mac G5 that I use after I make the movies on this G4 with the old version of iMovie. (No DVD burner). I shoot in widescreen NTSC so overall DVD quality and WS capability are my priorities. Have been searching the discussions re: newer versions and have reservations about bugs, etc. I have the latest version QT, no iLife. Any updates to either application can be made on the G5 as well if that would be benificial. Thanks...

tootnkim,
If you can't wait for iLife 7, get iLife 6 (iLife 5 had problems with iMovie 5 not properly setting the widescreen flag for iDVD 5. And iDVD 5 had a problem with 4:3 menus in a 16:9 project)s.
I don't know if your're familiar with Matti's page. He highlights some known bugs in iMovie 5 & 6 you might be interested in. He has a couple of fixes/tips regarding widescreen, pillarboxing & letterboxing also.
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovieHD_6bugs.html

Will widescreen TV's pillarbox 4:3 iDVD's

An SD TV -- at least in my experience -- will automatically letterbox a widescreen DVD. Is the reverse not true? Do widescreen TVs not pillarbox standard definition DVDs? Is there a setting on the DVD player or TV to do that?

Oh boy... This gets "complex."
Commercial DVDs:
If I play a 4:3 through my HDMI output/input on my Sony HD XBR960 CRT it stretches the video off the screen. If I switch to component video input, it plays 4:3.
Bottom line: Play around.

DVD bounces from widescreen (menus) to pillarboxed (1440x1080i footage)

My goal is to take my footage, and the menus, and display them all in widescreen.
I'm importing a sequence directly from premiere as an timeline.
Premiere settings:
My footage and my sequences are 1440x1080i (1.3333)
Here is a pic of my Encore Project, you can see the pillar box on the side:

Going from HD down to SD is more art than science... you may need to crop your video when you export from Premiere
I go from AVCHD down to SD for a DVD, and also have narrow bands... which I just leave alone - see #4 http://forums.adobe.com/thread/652694?tstart=0

How do you handle mixes of widescreen(16:9) and fullscreen(4:3)?

Okay I have a native Fullscreen(4:3) (FS from now on) that has a widescreen (16:9) (WS from now on) mode. I am primarily using the widescreen mode for shooting but on my Panasonic using the WS mode disables the image stabilization. You have to flip back to FS to turn on stabilization. The result is I have tapes that are mainly WS but have scenes, or clips, that are FS.
When I create a new iMovieHD (ver 5) project I choose DV Widescreen as the video format. Most of the video is fine but the FS parts are stretched. If I just choose DV all the WS footage is crammed into FS and only the FS shots look right. What I would like is to use WS format and have any FS content pillarboxed.
2 part question:
1> Is there a way to do this in iMovieHD ver 5?
2>If no on 1 is this something that is better handled in ver 6? Might be a good excuse to buy iLife 06.

Welcome to iMovie Discussions.
The following works for me in iMovie HD 6 ..try it and see if it works in iMovie HD 5, but I'm not sure (..I've forgotten..) if drag'n'drop between projects works in HD5; I don't think HD5 allows two projects to be open simultaneously. If not, you may need to Ctrl-click (..using the Finder..) on your 4:3 project to 'Show Package Contents', and then Copy the footage that's in the 'Media' folder onto your Desktop, so that you can then drag it into your 16:9 project..
(1) Create a new project in 16:9 and import your 16:9 footage into that.
(2) Create a new project in 4:3 and import your 4:3 footage into that.
(3) Open the two projects side-by-side.
(4) Drag clips from the 4:3 project into the 16:9 project ..they'll look wrong at first, but wait till they've been automatically 'pillarboxed'.
The result looks like this:

Can't get video to be letterboxed or in widescreen mode

There may another question out there like this, but I couldn't find it. I have a Sony D8 DCR-TRV280 and have starting switching the video to record in 16:9. But when I try to import/capture it in IMovie 6 it just stretches the video to fit in 4:3. I'm new to IMovie and I have no idea how to switch it either to import/capture the movie in widescreen or to get it to letterbox the footage. I have the preferences set to automatically Pillarbox or letterbox, but it doesn't want to do it. Is there something else I could do. Thanks for any help in advance.

Hi Jonelle!
When you start a new project you are invited to give it a name, and where to store it (always the Movies Folder). Just below that field is a small arrow. Click that, and set the project to DV Widescreen.
In iMovie's preferences, uncheck the box 'automatic pillarboxing'.
You should be ready to go!

Importing DV Widescreen from Sony HD Camcorder doesn't work

I bought iLife 06 yesterday. Today I started a new iMovie project and specified it was to be in DV Widescreen PAL. When I connected the camcorder (a Sony HDR-HC1E - the very same as the one that Steve Jobs used to demonstrate iMovie 06 at Macworld) it refused to import in widescreen and instead imported in normal (narrowscreen) DV. Consequently the picture is of course all squashed up. This process worked impeccably in the previous version of iMovie with the same camcorder.
When I spoke to Apple Care, after considerable research they said that this was an incompatibility problem. The camera is incompatible with iMovie 06. (I wonder how this can be when it was compatible with the previous iMovie AND is being demonstrated by Jobs himself.)
I should make clear that although the camcorder is HD-capable, I was actually recording in DV Widescreen (because the resulting file would otherwise be too big to put onto a DVD.)
I find it astonishing that Apple can release an upgrade which does not have the ability to do what its previous version did. Apple Care's advice was to uninstall iMovie 06, revert to the previous version and hope that an upgrade to iMovie 06 "might" solve the problem. What kind of help is this?

Well, I'm here in the US, using the NTSC version of the HC1. I don't have the problem you describe, in iMovie 5 or 6. But the settings on the camera are quite complex, so it could be a setting was wrong when you recorded, or when you capturing into iMovie. Using the english menus, you need to go like this on the camera, while in camera mode:
P-Menu > Menu > Standard Set > DV Set > Wide Select
and make sure that's in 16:9 before you start taping anything.
Then to get it into iMovie, you have to force the iLink port to DV quality.
P-Menu > Menu > Standard Set > VCR HDV/DV
and chose DV.
I am able to capture 4:3 and 16:9 clips into either DV or DV Widescreen projects, and iMovie 6 correctly letterboxes/pillarboxes as needed.
You are using a "DV Widescreen" project, right?

What causes pillarboxing to occur part way through a movie?

On very few occasions, my canon optura generated video when being imported to iMovie will have a series of clips, pillarbox. The overwhelming majority of all my movies and their clips never pillarbox. I have the camera defaulting to 16:9 and iMovie import preferences set to widescreen.
I might on occasion have been trying different camera modes/actions during a vacation, etc. and somehow get out of 16:9 or ?????????
Main question is what causes pillarboxing in the first place and from there perhaps I can figure out what I have done to trigger it.
Thanks

Uncheck "iMovie HD/Preferences.../Import/Automatic DV Pillarboxing & Letterboxing".
Check these out from Matti Haveri:
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovieHD_6bugs.html#widescreen
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovieHD_6_bugs.html#pillar_letterboxingpref
Sue

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

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

Some videos show up widescreen while some don't...???

I would love a defintive answer to this one.
I have my ATV hooked upto my TV that puts out 1080i.
I've ripped all my movies at 640x480. Some show up full screen while others show up with bars on the sides. Is this because some movies are formatted for widescreen while some are formatted for 4:3 standard aspect ratio? If so is there anyway to fix this? The videos are a mix up of movies and TV shows.
Thanks!

Michael,
Knowledge base article http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303530 provides detailed information relating to Letterboxing, Pillarboxing and Windowboxing.
Regards,
Chris

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.

How to get rid of widescreen

I use a miniDV camcorder in a 4:3 format. It has a widescreen feature, but all it does is to crop top and the bottom of the picture and replace them with letterbox. It is not a natural widescreen.
Any clip I import into iMovie gets stretched out into wide screen. When I export into iWeb, movie is also stretched out. I have to do a custom export and give it proper size. That would not be the major problem
The major problem is that if the movie is stretched out in iMovie and i import any pictures from iPhoto (pillarboxing makes no difference here!!!!!!) the picture is correct, while the movie is stretched out. Now, if I happen to export it into 4:3 format, the movie becomes natural 4:3 again, but the picture is now very narrow (squeezed). So, I have to go to Photoshop, stretch the picture into anticipated widescreen import into iMovie and pray that the movie and the picture will eventually be rendered in a correct ratio in the end. that's NOT acceptable.
Is there any way as to how to get rid of widescreen adn work in 4:3 ratio? I would appreciate it. Spending 3k on a widescreen hd cam? sorry, but I'm not that **** bent on doing digi video........
iMovie is a great app with tons of features, but combining a 4:3 video with pictures in 4:3 format doesn't mix together. Again: pillarboxing preference checkbox makes ZERO difference on the imported clip - it's still stretched out. Am I missing something?

Also make sure to uncheck the "iMovie HD/Preferences.../Import/Automatic DV Pillarboxing & Letterboxing" if you still have problems.
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovieHD_6_bugs.html#pillar_letterboxingpref

Best Codec for Digital Hi8 SD Widescreen render to Youtube

I shoot material on a Digital Hi8 camcorder in widescreen mode and can't seem to find a reasonable codec to render to for Youtube uploads that fill the screen.
When I render at a 720x480 resolution and upload to Youtube I get letter and pillar boxing in the resulting Youtube. Many of my videos are over 10 or 15 minutes long and even though I have the ability to upload over 15 minute videos to my account, Elements will often give me a warning and not allow me to upload anything over 10 minutes long using the direct to Youtube "share" function.
I've tried various .mpg and .wmv settings and have basically settled on 1280x720 as the rendered video resolution, but not only does this take a long time to render and upload as they become huge files at this resolution, but it also seems to be a waste and potential image degradation issue as it's blowing up the original video, but this is the only resolution it seems that fills up the Youtube window once uploaded.
I also tend to try to up my audio codec too since a lot of my videos are music related and like to keep the audio quality up too.
Any suggestions??

Yes, Digital8 I guess would be the more accurate and correct term for the format... I do set my project settings for DV SD Widscreen which I assume is 720x480 and confirmed with the details of clips I import when I check them in Explorer.
But when I render out to Windows Media (I've had problems rendering out as Quicktime before - fluttering of video, sync problems) so I've relied on mpg or windows media for the time being - when I render out as 720x480 and then upload to youtube, I get letterboxing and pillarboxing. Only when I expand the video to 1280x720 do I end up with a fully filled youtube viewing window. (And even then I am still getting a little black above and below the video)
I can also improve the audio quality this way going with a windows 9.2 lossless codec which I like. Downside with all this is huge file sizes, long renders, and long upload times.
I will try these settings that you provided, but won't 640x480 give me 4x3 squished video since my sources is 16x9?? Thanks for the help guys and community!
From the Share tab, choose Computer and then QuickTime/MOV. Choose the DV preset and then click the Advanced button.
From the settings window, do the following:
Video Tab
*Video Codec: H.264
*Quality: 100
*Frame Wdith: 640
*Frame Height: 480
*Frame Rate: 29.97
*Field Type: Progressive
*Pixel Aspect Ratio: square
*Set Bitrate: checked
*Bitrate: 8000 kbps
Audio Tab
*Audio Code: AAC
*Output Channels: Stereo
*Frequency: 44kHz

Widescreen full screen?

This might sound like a stupid question but I thought I'd check! I'm important widescreen footage from a DV cam, into iMovie HD 6. The project is set to be DV Widescreen and the frame rate is set to 25 (because I'm PAL).
I import the footage but when I play it back full screen from within iMovie, I still get letterboxing top and bottom of the screen. It looks fine when I play it within iMovie with the normal play button (not full screen). Should I have the Automatic DV Pillarboxing & Letterboxing option switched on or off? It seems to make no difference in this case.
I assumed I'd be able to play back full screen, without the letterboxing. Is it because I am using an Apple 23" Cinema Display? Its resolution is 1900x1200 - perhaps this isn't 16:9 or maybe I'm missing something else.
Any ideas? Thanks!

Hi Gavin!
A widescreen 16:9 DVD is intended to fill the screen
of a modern widescreen TV, but even there you may
still get the occasional bar at the top and bottom
from retail DVDs of films shot in an even wider
format.
The resolution of 16:9 DV is 1900 x 1080 - maybe
enough of a difference to be noticeable on your 23"
display (Klaus suppresses jealous snort). Even
on my mere 20" iMac the image from full-screen 16:9
DVDs, including ones in iMovie, do not quite
match the exact screen size.
As to your question: Automatic DV Pillarboxing &
Letterboxing should be OFF, just set it at 16:9.
Hi Klaus!
Many thanks for your answer, that's a big help right away. I guess if 16:9 DV is 1900 x 1080 and the Cinema Display 23" is 1900 x 1200 then there would have to be black bars. Can someone with a 23" Cinema Display confirm this?
Thanks for the answer to the Automatic DV Pillarboxing/Letterboxing, glad to get that cleared up as I was confused.
(And yes, the Cinema Display is gorgeous, well worth the extra cost!)
Gavin

Widescreen & pillarboxing

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for