| With widescreen display becoming the norm in
US and other cultural societies, and hours of tape that have been acquired
in 4:3 modes, editors/producers are faced with a few new choices as to how
to make their existing SD footage fit in the world of HD. There are several
courses of action that may be taken, but each carries with it a small cost.
However, as we move towards the future as editors, we must consider the fact
that "Uncle Joe" bought a widescreen display (whether its HD or not) and he
doesn't want to see pillarboxes on his screen, nor does he want to see a
wedding video in which his 5'7" neice has become a 5'1" oompa-loompa either.
Of course, if his display is a high def display, there is a great chance the
television will autostretch the image on it's own and may get the aspect
ratio correct, but lose a tremendous amount of resolution in the process.
So, how do we avoid all of this and ensure that our images look as great
as we've intended?
First and foremost, start shooting 16:9 NOW. Get used to it. SD or HD,
start shooting. early to become familiar with the additional implications of
shooting a full third more area.
Second, in post, you can immediately begin dealing with the 4:3/standard
aspect ratio display right now.
Here are a few methods, with my preferred method at the end of this brief
tutorial.
PAN/CROP:
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We can use the Pan/Crop Tool in Sony Vegas to make our image fit the full
frame, and this is a fairly easy and painless technique. In fact, there are
scripts from John Rofrano and VASST that accomplish this for you. The
downside to this technique is that the image loses resolution due to being
cropped and effectively zoomed. While for many images this may prove to be
no big deal, it could present problems for images with very fine detail in
small horizontal or vertical lines.
To use the pan crop tool to bring the 4:3 image to widescreen, start a
new or existing project with a project property set to DV-Widescreen (either
NTSC or PAL)
All images will require processing of some kind if this is your chosen
method.
FILLED FRAME:
This is another technique that works, but again affects the resolution of
the image, much the same way as Pan/Crop does. With the same project open
and same media on the timeline, open the Track Motion tool and size the
image to fit the entire frame. This may involve some slight stretching as
you can see in the image below, but again, it's a viable tool and may work
for your particular needs. The image is stretched long and squished
vertically in this preview, but no resolution is lost.
My favorite method however, leaves the original image at original
resolution, but is sized to fit in a widescreen display with no loss of
original quality.
FILLED PILLARBOXES:
Open the new or existing project as a DV/PAL widescreen project. You'll
note pillarboxing on the right/left sides of the media. This is the area
we're going to exploit. Media can be placed behind the original 4:3 frame
that is either contrasted to the original, or complimentary to the original
image. We'll start by adding a new video track beneath the original track.
Copy the original media to the new track below.
In the lower track, Use the Pan/Crop tool to bring the lower image only,
to widescreen aspect ratio. Right click the image in the Pan/Crop dialog and
choose "Match Aspect Ratio." Now add Gaussian Blur to the lower image only..
This will blur the background of the lower copy of the image, providing a
matching background to the original. Extreme Blur usually works well.
Now you have a preview with matching colors and motion, that won't
distract from the original image in most cases. On the other hand, you may
wish more contrast. Adding Sepia, old film looks, color curves, etc are a
few options that can be used to cause the background and the foreground to
mix..
If the media doesn't present well by using a reproduction of itself with
FX, consider using generated media in the background instead. Vegas is
filled with generated media that may be used for backgrounds.
You might find the noise easy to work with as well.
Finally, there are all sorts of background libraries from developers like
Artbeats, Sony's own Visions/Textures libraries, etc that may be used
underneath the 4:3 video.
Use the backgrounds in your library for interesting and creative looks.
Just be sure that the background media doesn't distract from the original
media.
One minor consideration is that if you'll be displaying this media for
long periods of time on a plasma monitor, you might consider blurring the
edges of the 4:3 media, as there is a potential to cause burn-in on the
plasma. If the 4:3 and underlying footage are heavily contrasted, and the
display will be showing this particular media for lengthy periods of time
such as days on end in a museum kiosk or other long-form display, you'll
want to consider burn-in, and avoid it by either blurring the edging, or
moving content around on the screen.
There are a couple of other options available, the above method is my
preferred method in most instances. However, when bringing the SD into an HD
project, it may be too obvious that the SD is being scaled to the HD
resolution. The afore-mentioned techniques help reduce this issue, but not
completely. So, it might be in your best interests to consider laying SD
into an HD project with frames or resized footage that allows the HD to look
great, but allows the SD to look great as well.
These are all very simple methods, but may not be immediately obvious to
editors that need to keep original resolution and image quality as high as
possible in their programming. Using Track Motion and Pan/Crop, many things
become very easy in image aspect and size manipulation. Practice a bit in
the spare moments, you'll quickly come up with a format that works best for
you.
Happy Editing!
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