How can u for example adjust the brightness of the footage without making the black bars brighter too?

There may be a better way but what I did was correct the footage ignoring the letterbox (black bars) then I added two cookie cutters to make new black bars where the old ones were. Maybe even easier would be cropping the top and bottom with "event pan/crop."

You may have to render so that the new letterbox doesnt get effected by the filters.

Why do you have black bars? Are you letterboxing in 4:3? You don't have to do this, you know. You can render the widescreen as true widescreen so it plays full screen on a widescreen TV and letterboxes on a 4:3 set. That way, you don't have to worry about the luminance of the black bars.

Guy, in the second instance you mention (<<and letterboxes on a 4:3 set.>>), does the DVD player produce the black bars?

Yes. The DVD player knows (because you told it when you set it up) if it is outputting to a 4:3 or widescreen set. If the set is 4:3, then the DVD player letterboxes the video. If it is widescreen, it plays the video full screen. This is how commercial widescreen movies are displayed only most movies are 2:35:1 instead of 16:9 so the black bars are larger on the movies.

Guy, do you want to share your workflow in Vegas, when you're creating a widescreen output without black bars in a MPEG2 file, when the source material is letterboxed widescreen material?

Peter,
I never shoot in Cinema mode (letterboxed widescreen in a 4:3 frame). However, if I were to get video in that mode, I would just crop out the black bars and stretch the video to fill a 16:9 frame. This is the same as shooting in 4:3 and cropping the frame to 16:9. You lose about 25% of the resolution, but the video looks right on a widescreen set and is letterboxed on 4:3 when played from a DVD player.

Hi GUy, when you say "...I would just crop out the black bars and stretch the video to fill a 16:9 frame..." when you should work with letterboxed widescreen, what do you mean with stretch the video to fill a 16:9 frame? Is the frame wider than 720 pixels? I always thought that anamorphic widescreen is vertically stretched widescreen video that fits in a 4:3 format dv-format (PAL 720x576 pixels). And that a widescreen tv squeezes the vertically stretched video back to the right aspect ratio. And that a 4:3 tv squeezes also and adds black bars to have the right display.

I suffer from the widescreen blues - not being able to find the perfect solution.
I always have shot everything in 4:3 mode with my XM2, and have the 16:9 guides on to be able to frame just in case I need to convert in post. You will be surprised just how much restriction there is trying to frame in this view.
I have always preferred to render in 4:3 mode as this definately gives the best possible resolution.
No one has complained about this, although I know that most people these days have widescreen and I would like to get the best possible compromise. I try to acheive as best as I can out of my XM2. If I have to convert in post I do vertical stretch in w/s mode to maintain the aspect ratio - but I must say that I do notice the degregation in vertical resolution (it would pass to customer but I am a perfectionist).
Over the time that I have been doing video I have built up quite a stock of animations and titles (done in 4:3 mode). These were done with various editors and I've probably thrown away the project files. I am finding that they do not fit correctly in a w/s format (titles ending up off visable screen area etc).
So as you can see, I'm not a lover of w/s and wish the darn thing had not been invented in the first place!
It's ok for landscape, but people are the wrong proportion for it. They tend to be taller than they are wide!
Customers do not realize the headaches involved in video production - you just point the camera at them - and a dvd comes out the other end!

Mel.

No one has complained about this, although I know that most people these days have widescreen

No, the majority of people have 4:3. :-)

Perhaps in the US - but different in the UK

Wow! Now that is something. All the articles I've read don't address that, so I guess they are US-centric. Pretty interesting though.

I always thought that anamorphic widescreen is vertically stretched widescreen video that fits in a 4:3 format dv-format (PAL 720x576 pixels). And that a widescreen tv squeezes the vertically stretched video back to the right aspect ratio. And that a 4:3 tv squeezes also and adds black bars to have the right display.
Peter,
When you crop out a 16:9 frame from within a 4:3 frame then render it out as widescreen, unless you stretch the video to fill the frame, it will simply letterbox. Obviously, we don't want this. We want the video to completely fill a 16:9 frame.

You are correct that anamorphic video is vertically stretched (or horizontally sqeezed depending on your point of view). When you are working with Vegas and the project is set to widescreen, the video (although anamorphically stretched with widescreen pixels) is displayed correctly in the preview window...just like it will be on a widescreen display. When you render it out, you select widescreen pixels and Vegas renders that stretched vertically. Then, the display or DVD player must detect the widescreen pixels and unstretch them so they display correctly. Usually, this is done by the DVD player...at least in the US. Here, most TVs cannot perform this conversion although I have heard some Sony 4:3 sets can do it.

Ok.
I'll just give the workflow and you can try it for yourselves.

Put a 4:3 video on the timeline.

Go to pan/crop and select the 16:9 preset. You will now show a letterboxed frame in the preview window.

Go to Edit>>Switches and unclick Maintain Aspect Ratio. The video in preview will stretch vertically to fill the frame.

Go to File>>Properties and set the pixel aspect ratio to widescreen (either PAL or NTSC depending on your system standard). You will now see the video in preview fills a 16:9 frame.

Render out the project with widescreen pixels (leave stretch video to fill output frame size clicked) and you will have a cropped and stretched video in 16:9 format.

Hello Guy, thanx for sharing your workflow. I will try it out tonight.

Best regards,

Also remember to make sure your preview window is set to display anamorphic pixel width -- your renders will be fine without this, but it is annoying and misleading when you're editing if you can't "see" the true aspect ratio in the preview window. I forget the exact tool bar menu, but you simply right-click on the preview video window, and choose something like "emulate playback device aspect ratio". It doesn't actually say that, but if you right-click the preview window, it'll be obvious which item to select.

Hello guys, I did some testing and it seems to be working. It's a combination of both your suggestions that does the trick. To get a good preview in Vegas on the computerscreen, it's a matter of chosing 'emulate playback device aspect ratio' and also setting the 4:3 footage in a 16:9 widescreen project. If you forget this last step, it won't work.

Now there is only one question left: I use a firewirecard and a Canopus ADVC110 to have the realtime preview on a small but new 4:3 tv. The image on this tv looks vertically stretched, while when I switch back to the preview on the computerscreen there you'll see the right aspect ratio. Is there anything I do to get a proper preview on the 4:3 tv? (The tv doesn't have a manual 4:3/16:9 switch).

Unfortunately, no. The TV obviously doesn't have the capability to detect and display widescreen video correctly. So, there has to be some intelligent device between the PC and the TV that will do it. I don't believe the Canopus box does anything but convert between DV and analog.