Removing Letterboxing?

[Curtster]

hey,

I am in the middle of editing a video right now in which one of the scenes was accidentally shot in a letterboxed or widescreen format (whatever it is called lol). I am just wondering if it is possible to remove the lettboxing in Final Cut with out having to zoom. Thanks, your help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[mkrishnan]

What do you mean when you say you want to remove the letterboxing *without* zooming? Do you want to stretch the image and have it not be letterboxed but also not be correctly proportioned?

 

[Curtster]

sorry, i am not really experienced with this, so have patience lol. but I am just worried if I zoom it take out to much of the horizontal width of the image. I do not want it to be stretched no.

 

[mkrishnan]

Are you familiar with a "pan and scan" DVD? Where they take the widescreen image and just show you a 4:3 piece of it? I think you really only have two options if you want the whole video to have no letterboxing and be in 4:3 format -- stretch the image, or just show a 4:3 segment of it. If you show a 4:3 segment, you have the option of either having the frame be static, or you can move it around so that you get the most important parts.

You can see more about the options on pp. 54-55 of the manual (or here).

 

[pdpfilms]

So you just want to crop the top and bottom black areas, correct?

 

[Curtster]

So you just want to crop the top and bottom black areas, correct?

correct, but i don't think its really possible because the image would be stretched right?

 

[pdpfilms]

Hmmmm.... interesting point. I know that I've seen films of many varying aspect ratios, not just 4:3 and 16:9. Actually, I'm quite positive that Compressor (and Quicktime, I assume) will allow you to export custom frame dimensions... not sure of other programs though.

 

[AstrayCliche]

Have you considered letterboxing the rest of the footage? You're going to have to make a trade off somewhere.

Could you possibly just reshoot the footage?

 

[faustfire]

Simply put, you are going to loose quality no matter what you do. You are going to have to zoom in past the letterboxing. If you stretch the frame, your frame will be out of proportion.

You cant get something from nothing.

 

[mkrishnan]

Simply put, you are going to loose quality no matter what you do. You are going to have to zoom in past the letterboxing. If you stretch the frame, your frame will be out of proportion.

However, if this is an HD shot, particularly if it was taken at 1080p, you're probably going to be more than fine cropping it.

 

[LethalWolfe]

However, if this is an HD shot, particularly if it was taken at 1080p, you're probably going to be more than fine cropping it.

But if it was shot HD it wouldn't be letterboxed it would be 16x9.


Lethal