I was reading the poll in the Video forum about Widescreen, and many people seem to like widescreen. However, if you are going to make your montage in widescreen, you need to do it properly. I've decided to make a quick tutorial on how to make your video widescreen, the proper way.

First and foremost, you need to understand that Widescreen video is designed for Widescreen monitors and HDTVs. For some reason, you people seem to think it looks "cool" if the video is widescreen on your 4:3 monitor. It is true that Widescreen provides a much more immersive viewing experience, as you get more viewing area. However, if you don't do widescreen properly, you are screwing over the people who you are supposedly designing the video for: the people who are viewing it on a widescreen monitor!

Let me explain:

Here we see what Walshy's montage looks like when you view it in full screen on your 4:3 monitor:


It looks "cool," right? Personally, I can't understand how having the top and bottom of your video cut off is "cool", but whatever.

Now, let's try to watch Walshy's montage on our nice 16:9 widescreen monitor:


Wait a second! The video is supposedly "widescreen," so why is it just a small box with black bars all around it? Because the video is "letterboxed".

Letterboxed: A video with a normal 4:3 resolution that has black bars on the top and bottom to fake the appearance of being "widescreen". The actual resolution of Walshy's montage is 640x480, but it has black bars that take up the top and bottom part of the video.

Letterboxed + Widescreen monitor = Windowboxed

Windowboxed: A letterboxed video, when viewed on a widescreen monitor, will appear to have black bars on all four sides of the video. This is because the actual resolution of the video is 640x480, and when viewed on a widescreen monitor, the 640x480 video is centered and black bars are put on either side because the video is technically not true "widescreen".

This tutorial will show you how to properly make your montage, or any video, proper widescreen so that it is not letterboxed or pillarboxed. Walshy's montage should look like this:


Notice how there are no black bars anywhere? That is because the actual resolution of the video is a widescreen resolution.

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So, how do we do this?

Step 1: In Vegas, click File>New to open a new project, or open the project you are already working on and click File>Properties.

Step 2: Change the "Height" attribute to 360.


Step 3: Drag your clips onto the timeline if you haven't done so already. Click the "Event Pan/Crop..." button in the corner of your video clip.
Right now the preview window should be showing a widescreen window with black bars on either side of your video.


Step 4: Change the "Height" attribute to 360. Your video should now take up the entire widescreen frame, and have no black bars anywhere. This is good.


Step 5: When rendering your video, be sure to go into the Video tab of the Custom properties and change the Image Size attribute to "(Custom)". Then, make sure the "Height" attribute is at 360.


Now your video is a proper widescreen resolution, and everyone is happy.

If you are really smart, you'll go out and buy a widescreen monitor or HDTV so that you can actually play the game in widescreen. And you'll change the settings in the Xbox dashboard to "Widescreen" and capture your video in true widescreen that the game outputs, without having anything cut off.

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I guess its cool but the black bars sometime make the montage look nicer....And it keeps mbs down some.

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BAH. Black bars are bad. Changing the resolution is good.

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Thats actually incorrect they are taking up more data, takes away quality from the video it'self.

And I'm starting to love reading what you have to write Lloyd, your like....Me! I like reading smart computer based threads. <3

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sticky anyone?

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yes good point, but as you said in the other thread very few people have widescreen monitors so who cares

Well it does'nt hurt the video at all for people with 4:3 screens but it greatly helps people with Widescreen monitors.

a 4:3 screen will look exactly the same, but a 16:9 or 16:10 will be alot better.

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Yeah. If you're on a 4:3 monitor, it will look exactly the same. But if you're on a widescreen monitor, you won't get pissed off and feel the urge to go onto the forums and b..ch about why newbs shouldn't letterbox and stuff. And it honestly isn't that diffiicult to do.

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Good posting
PS Crest you have the funniest sigs ever HAHA!

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