Crop to 16:9?

[Rich963]

Hello. I'm currently using the trial version of x4 Pro. I'd like to buy it, but I've come across a problem which I need to solve before I do.

I'm intending to transfer all my old DV footage to my PC, but it's in 4:3 and I'd like to crop it to 16:9. When I use the crop feature in x4, unlike other programs (avidemux, virtual dub), it does not resize the video, just adds black borders where I've cropped, which isn't technically 'cropping'!

I've tried video pan & zoom, but annoyingly this defaults to the aspect ratio of the video clip, not the project settings.

I'm sure there must be a way to do this which is 'easy when you know', but I can't work it out. I tried support, but they didn't know and advised me to ask here.

Very grateful for a solution!

Rich963

[Ken Berry]

Hi Rich -- welcome to the forums!

Have you tried rendering a small piece of the cropped video to a new file, and played that. How does it look on a software media player?

[Rich963]

Hi Ken, thanks for the welcome and your reply.

I tried doing what you suggested, but the black bars remained, unfortunately. The only way I've found to do it so far is to 'fool' the pan & zoom function by saving a 4:3 file as 16:9, then re-opening it. The pan & zoom then is widescreen shaped, but this adds an unwanted extra layer of compression (and lots of processing time!) to every file.

Can you think of a way to make the pan & zoom function default to the 16:9 shape, even if the video clip is 4:3?

Many thanks,
Richard.