4:3 to 16:9 Problem - help!

seanmccoy wrote on 3/29/2012, 6:24 PM
Hey all, weird project here. Client had a DVD made from a TV shoot that he wanted to make into a concert video. Ripped the DVD to a DV AVI file, and used the "Match Media Settings" function for the project. When finished, the client says the video is stretched and wrong. Assuming the majority of people have widescreen TV's and don't like to or know how to deal with different aspect ratios, he wants to release the DVD as a 16:9 without video distortion. I'm confused as to what settings I need to alter, and at what point in the process, to achieve the best conversion from 4:3 to 16:9. The AVI file is 720 X 480 with a pixel aspect ratio of 0.9091. Do I need to alter either of those at the media or Vegas project level? When rendering, I assume I need to select 16:9 aspect ratio, but do I need to alter anything else? Should I select "stretch video to fill output frame size?" And in DVDA, the media aspect ratio is of course 1.2121 if I select NTSC widescreen. Does that matter? If somebody could walk this clueless audio guy through the best way to make this happen, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Comments

Julius_ wrote on 3/29/2012, 7:27 PM
Okay, I'll take a shot.

Going from 4:3 to 16:9 will be awful. It's like taking an elastic and stretching it. The video pixels just aren't there to fill-in 16:9. Period.

Why don't you just leave it as 4:3...most (if not all) TVs will still play it with the proper aspect ratio, some even have a zoom to fill the TV screen (which will be stretched).

The only thing you'll see is some black bars on the side, but the quality won't suffer (playing 4:3 on 16:9 setting).

If your still adamant about going to 16:9 on a 4:3 footage:
-Place the footage on the timeline
-On the project properties, select "NTSC DV Widescreen (720x480, 29.970 fps)"
(of course it will look stretched)
-On render, select MPEG-2 and the template for DVD Architect NTSC WideScreen
-When finished, goto DVD Architect and select the rendered file and burn it.

Hope that helps.
altarvic wrote on 3/29/2012, 10:40 PM
Create 16:9 project and add your 4:3 clips. There are 4 ways to convert them to 16:9

1) Do nothing.
Advantages: No video distortion
Disadvantages: black sidebars (aka pillarbox)

2) Stretch (turn off Maintain Aspect Ratio switch )
Advantages: None
Disadvantages: Distortion

3) Crop (Pan/Crop: Match Output Aspect)
Advantages: No video distortion
Disadvantages: Some visual information from the top and bottom is lost

4) Photoshop :)

seanmccoy wrote on 3/29/2012, 11:20 PM
These four options exactly corroborate my day's full of research on the subject, so thanks much for making it so concise. I had read a couple of descriptions of filters and plugins that purported to be able to make the conversion nicely, but each was met with those warning that there is no free lunch. This tutorial, which is one of the best I've seen on the Internet, clearly shows that to be true. While certainly an impressive effort, it ain't perfect. Perfection in this case may be simply physically impossible. But then again, I never thought polyphonic pitch correction would be possible, and yet we do have Melodyne DNA. So who knows?