HDV to DV Ratio Problem.

[Nicholas de Kock]

I edited a project in HDV and need to down convert to DVD Pal Widescreen, the problem, I'm getting envelopes on the left and right side of my DV footage. Tried everything I know, how can I solve this?

[Edward Troxel]

If you mean the stripes down the left and right side, I'm betting they won't be visible on a TV anyway. However, you might try checking "stretch to fill frame" when rendering and see if that helps.

[Andrew Kufahl]

If you have your project properties correctly configured for your target output... another thing I believe works is to go into the "Event Pan/Crop" for your clip(s), right click inside the dashed bounding rectangle, then choose "Match Output Aspect". But just be aware that you'll lose a little bit along the top/bottom of your clip. The downside to this technique is that you need to apply it to every clip in your project. The upside is that you have the ability to then re-position the pan/crop bounding box in case there is something along the top/bottom edge you want to keep. Not to mention that [I believe] you won't incur any distortion of the image that may be imposed by the "stretch to fill frame" method.

Andrew

[Chris Callaghan]

When doing a multicam here is a trick I picked up.
Mix of cameras HD, and SD.

Set up your project using the desired output (widescreen etc)
Make sure you have some "spare" footage at the beginning of your multicam, you can delete this later.
Create duplicate tracks of every video track, this will be handy if you want to do some masking or superimposition later. You can apply an FX on these tracks independently, or copy and paste attributes from your corrected takes - below.
When you first create the multicam, you lose ALL event pan/crop, including matching aspect on the selected video tracks.

in the multicam track select 'cam1' , and apply whatever fx you want to it, including matching aspect. This will hold for all subsequent 'takes' from this camera.
Continue from where you stopped, and select the next camera 'cam2' and apply whatever pan/crop to get this to match aspect .
Ditto for all camera tracks. Don't change 'takes', instead continue along the timeline and actually select the next camera.

Beware, that if you decide to change 'takes' after you have finished your multicam, for some reason the fx applied to, say, a 'cam1' take will be applied to the replacement 'cam2' take, so you need to fix it up.
You can either copy from another 'cam2' take and paste attributes, or go in fresh and apply whatever fx you like.

When you are finished your multicam edit, you can easily delete the 'setup' footage. (Control+A) select the range to delete, and chop,

I'm still a newbie, so if there is something wrong with this workflow, please let me know.

[John Cline]

Vegas is very literal about maintaining the absolute correct aspect ratio when converting from one widescreen format to another. Ed's suggestion about using the "stretch to fill output frame" setting will eliminate the bars, however, your footage will then be wider than is correct. People will appear ever-so-slightly shorter and fatter than in reality.

[Edward Troxel]

I figured such a small amount of stretch (8 pixels) would not be noticeable. Now... stretch 4:3 to 16:9 :-)

[John Cline]

Originally Posted by Edward Troxel

I figured such a small amount of stretch (8 pixels) would not be noticeable. Now... stretch 4:3 to 16:9 :-)

Ed, I think your solution was perfectly valid and the only way to eliminate the micro-pillarboxing. It's highly unlikely that anyone would actually notice the stretch. I just wanted to point out that the result wouldn't be "nitpickingly" correct.