This quote is exactly what i want to do with some of my gl2 footage.


"I shot in 4:3 as well with my XL1S since I wanted the option to
reframe the footage vertically. This was done with Sony Vegas
(NLE) when I was editing. I added a 16:9 mask I had created
and I could vertically shift the footage underneath this mask to
reframe it and look great. I did use the 16:9 guidelines during
shooting to give me a guide for framing."

What is the easiest way to make the mask??

I have Adobe and Vegas programs

This quote is exactly what i want to do with some of my gl2 footage.


"I shot in 4:3 as well with my XL1S since I wanted the option to
reframe the footage vertically. This was done with Sony Vegas
(NLE) when I was editing. I added a 16:9 mask I had created
and I could vertically shift the footage underneath this mask to
reframe it and look great. I did use the 16:9 guidelines during
shooting to give me a guide for framing."

What is the easiest way to make the mask??

I have Adobe and Vegas programs

I just used photoshop and made a mask, and now I can import it into any project whenever I want.

thank you for the note.

I solved the problem in premiere by cropping 12.5 % off the top and 12.5 % off the bottom.

I took a capture of a leterboxed frame

Placed it on a track above,

altered opacity

Cropped the top and bottm to match the overlaid picture

Copied

Pasted attributes

Done

It seems Dale has resolved his issue, but I thought I'd reply for the benefit of future readers of this thread.

Cropping video is way better than adding mattes. If you crop, you can render your project out as 16:9 anamorphic, which will fill a widescreen television. If you use mattes, your video will be both pillarboxed and letterboxed on a 16:9 display--in other words, there will be a black border around the image on all four sides. Since more and more people are buying widescreen TV's, this is becoming more and more important. Your output file will also use the entire 720x480 NTSC raster this way instead of wasting output resolution on the letterbox (which if going to DVD, will be inserted on the fly by the DVD player). This won't make the video itself look any better, but your titles, transitions, effects, etc. will look better.

I haven't used Premiere since before the Civil War, but here's the easiest way to crop 4:3 to 16:9 in Vegas:

1) Change (or set, if beginning a new project) your project template to widescreen DV.

2) Go to event pan/crop for an video clip, and select the 16:9 preset from the drop-down menu. To adjust the framing, you can move the cropped area up or down until you get what you want. Exit pan/crop.

3) Copy the cropped clip, then select all of your other clips, right-click, and select "paste event attributes." Go through and adjust the framing on each clip if you want, or if necessary.

4) When you go to render, remember to render using a widescreen preset.