PAR and different res sources in one project
 

I've discovered that when shooting with my Canon HF100 -- when I am ready to render some footage, I have to make sure to select 1.3333 PAR when choosing something like the 3mbps template, or else the video will be in 4:3; and that means black bars on the sides of the video. To add to this, I've found that rendering this way is the only way to get it to display properly in youtube because of the way youtube processes it (it doesn't like widescreen video with a 1.3333 PAR).

The above isn't much of a problem, but the below is what is bothering me.


In Vegas, I really can't work with multiple resolutions and aspect ratios because of the way it looks; what I mean by this is that I have a regular widescreen video that looks just fine, but when it comes time to have some other footage mixed in with it (something like old public domain footage), that 4:3 footage is 'boxed' in the middle of the video and I don't want it to be.


There's got to be a way to have both 16:9 and 4:3 video displaying in their correct ratios simultaneously, and I don't mean necessarily displaying at the same exact time -- just in the same project.

I've got some web video to edit, so it'd be nice to get the 16:9 video working like it should (displaying letterboxed), but have the 4:3 video filling up the entire screen (like on youtube) at the same time.

One last problem here is that I'd like to get a watermark on the bottom black bar when having widescreen video, but Vegas won't allow you to put anything on the bar that isn't encoded; I was thinking that having a regular 4:3 project would actually allow you to do this since the 'box' (where the video is encoded) is actually there, unlike on widescreen which has the bars that aren't encoded.

Maybe there's a way to create a 4:3 project, and then nest in different aspect ratio projects?

Hi Jared. The last line of your post has the solution.

If you want 4:3 to be full screen and 16:9 to be letterboxed, you just need to make the project 4:3. As long as Vegas interprets the 16:9 footage aspect ratio correctly it will add the letterbox bars automatically. If the 16:9 footage does not display properly, right-click on a clip on the timeline and check the video properties, change the aspect ratio if necessary.

With a 4:3 project, you can add text or graphics in the black areas above and below the 16:9 footage.

When you render for web or PC, choose a 4:3 format with square pixel aspect ratio. This will prevent stretching or squashing type distortion on playback.

Richard

Hey Richard. I actually figured this out shortly after posting this. I started running some tests/experimenting, and I thought to create a 4:3 project with 16:9 footage; everything is working 100% perfectly now.

Thanks a lot for your reply; it sums everything up sweet and to the point!

yeah, YouTube is annoying in that it only accepts 1.0 PAR footage. So you have to nest your 16x9 timeline .vet inside of a 4x3 project and THEN you can render out the 320x240 footage.