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"letter boxing"...what does that mean?

B

BeeVeePee

macrumors newbie
Original poster
after downloading video onto my mac via imovie HD....sometimes I will "click" on one of the clips that were downloaded...the mac starts "thinking" and a popup says "Letter Boxing".....I let it do it's work..for up to about 40minutes..and it still will be processing...eventually I'll just "Force Quit" and start over again...but refrain from clicking on the clip until I've saved it..

any idea whats going on...?
thanks everyone
 
What kind of video are you working with?


Letterboxing is the process of masking the top and bottom of 4x3 video to make it look like 16x9 (or any other widescreen aspect). Letterboxing doesn't actually change the size/shape of the video, it just determines what part you will see.
 
bigbossbmb said:
What kind of video are you working with?


Letterboxing is the process of masking the top and bottom of 4x3 video to make it look like 16x9 (or any other widescreen aspect). Letterboxing doesn't actually change the size/shape of the video, it just determines what part you will see.
Click to expand...

I thought it was the other way around -- taking a 16 x 9 and making it fit on a 4x3 screen by adding black strips to the bottom and top.

As opposed to just cropping off the sides of a 16X9 video and displaying that at 4x3.
 
bigbossbmb said:
What kind of video are you working with?


Letterboxing is the process of masking the top and bottom of 4x3 video to make it look like 16x9 (or any other widescreen aspect). Letterboxing doesn't actually change the size/shape of the video, it just determines what part you will see.
Click to expand...

what do you mean by "what kind"? not sure ..
 
Yes, letterboxing is also a way to view 16x9 material in a 4x3 frame. Both definitions are indeed correct. One is more a recording definition and the other is more of a viewing definition.

By "what kind" I mean are you using MPEG4, DV, or HDV?
 
bigbossbmb said:
Yes, letterboxing is also a way to view 16x9 material in a 4x3 frame. Both definitions are indeed correct. One is more a recording definition and the other is more of a viewing definition.

By "what kind" I mean are you using MPEG4, DV, or HDV?
Click to expand...

digital video...panasonic cam...GS83 ....
I just don't know why it does it and why my computer keeps "not responding" once i click it.....
 
Settings...

These new camcorders have letter-boxing built in, you can select to tape in letter-box format or straight 4x3, also check your iMovie preferences about importing video....
 
Yes, both are correct definitions of "letterboxing". What I originally posted was "letterboxing" in terms of a 4x3 camera recording faux 16x9 material by masking out the top and bottom of a 4x3 source. The other definition of "letterboxing" is shrinking a 16x9 video to fit a 4x3 window. The black bars are still there, but they are not part of the source.

No "horse hockey" there.
 
There is a preference in the preferences pane to disable this feature. It probably means you've got a 4:3 workspace in iMovie and are importing widescreen content. This will squeeze or clip the content, unless you let it 'letterbox' it.

If all of your content is 16:9, you want to make sure you use a widescreen iMovie project and not a standard one, and you won't have to deal with that.
 
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