Change between 4:3 & 16:9 ratio

andrewgerm · Post by **andrewgerm** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 5:27 pm

Good day all...

I posted previously about a production we were doing, and having to edit several tapes. Thanks to all who sent tips.

I have one more question. I've been given some footage to add. We shot everything in 16:9, but this footage we've received is in what the camera calls 'cinema' mode. It looks widescreen, but is in fact 4:3 with black bars. If I import this into our production, which is 16:9, the footage is surrounded on all sides (top, bottem, left, right) by black bars. If I use the pan and zoom filter to try correct this, the filter seems to only zoom in on a square area. If I distort the clip to try make it fit, then things don't look right, and people are stretched.

Is there another, or easier way to do this? To me it seems that all that needs to be done is to expand the central image to fill the screen and things will work?

Hope this isn't another noobi question on my part.

Thanks in advance, and regards...

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 5:53 pm

Put the clips in the overlay track. Right click in the Preview Window for resizing options, or you can manually resize by dragging the yellow blocks.

andrewgerm · Post by **andrewgerm** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 9:22 pm

Hey, and thanks for the reply.

That would work wonders, except I've now just discovered that the new footage is actually in a really odd format, running at 29.970 fps, 720x480 at 4:3 (with black crop lines), and the audio is DV - NTSC.

I'm guessing this camera was bought overseas, and now is a different system to what we use here in S.A. and of course, what all our other cameras are. This was footage from an additional camera that was set up for the shoot, but the angles were so good, that we want to use the footage.

Is a frame size of 720x576 for a DVD correct if I'm wanting to render to 16:9?

Regards, and thanks again...

Post by **Ken Berry** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 9:33 pm

720 x 576 is the correct size for you, living as you do in a PAL country. 720 x 480 is the NTSC size. Both will give 16:9 AND 4:3.

So if the majority of your video is PAL, and you want to use some of this NTSC footage, then it will have to be converted at some stage to PAL. The problem is that Video Studio, or any other consumer level editing program, does not do a particularly good job at such conversions. First, it has to drop 4.97 frames per second as its speed is 29.97 fps following the NTSC standard, while the PAL speed is only 25 fps. Moreover, it has to invent 96 horizontal pixels to make up for the difference in frame size. The result is usually a noticeable loss of quality. There are specialised programs out there which do a much better job, such as Canopus Pro-Coder. But as you might guess, they are rather expensive...

andrewgerm · Post by **andrewgerm** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 9:47 pm

Thanks again to all for the replies.

Bit sad about this footage, as we had been counting on it to help out due to a rather very low budget.
But, I have just done a test render and although I've only been viewing on the PC at the moment, it seems that in the conversion, the original problem of size differences has been resolved. I've had to complete some other DVD work for another project at the moment, but intend to go back and check all this out.

Thanks to all again for the help. It is most appreciated, and has saved us a lot of stress!!