Is there an easier way of adding the widescreen filter to Final Cut sequences? As my film consist of many clips on many different layers/tracks it seems like a bit of a headache to have to apply the widescreen filter to every clip.

Surely there must be an easier way?

Yes, but you must own Adobe Photoshop. Create a new 720x480 document with two layers. On the upper layer, create your widescreen bars to whatever aspect you need them to be. Delete the bottom layer. Now everything but the bars will be transparent. Save as dawidescreenbarzyo.psd and import into Final Cut Amateur... err... Express. It'll probably change into a sequence of it's own. Set the timing of that sequence to however long you need it to be. Drag it on top of all the other layers. Render. Wait. Come back. Get mad that something went wrong. Repeat until it works.

Is there a "Matte Setting" FCE? Just wondering.

There is a matt folder in filters - this has widescreen filter in it. Is that what you mean, Sharon?

Thanks for the tips - weird and surprising that there isn't an easier way of doing it within Final Cut (Amateur - very amusing) itself without havin to resort to creating and importing bars from a separate application...?

Well you can also download mattes if you don't have Photoshop. I think the Lady X webpage has a standard 16:9 matte you can download. I don't know the URL, though.

Thank you as I do not own FCE it is good to know what they provide.

Can't you use the motion controls and crop to apply letterboxing?

2- FCE supports nesting. Draw your master sequence into a new sequence. right click the nest and open in viewer. Go into the motion controls tab and apply cropping. Use the widescreen filter as a guide.

That sounds a good one - thanks.

Nesting sequences was one thing I had been doing which seemed to make things a little simpler. One problem I had though was that, on a normal clip, the widescreen filter allows you to shift the image up or down (to get the ideal crop). This doesn't seem to work on nested sequences. Double clicking a nested sequence doesn't open the sequence in the viewer it opens the original clips in the timeline...?

You have to right click the nest and select the open in viewer option. I think there's another way to do that. It would probably involve holding shift or crtl and while double clicking.

To get the ideal crop:
You could use the motion controls on the clip to move it up/down. It's in the nest so the cropping gets applied afterwards. Perhaps the widescreen filter will help you visualize what happens (or give you the correct numbers to put into the motion controls).

Great - thanks for that Glenn, I'll give it a try.