Resizing Video and trimming video question

[Robert Lee]

Hi everyone:

Just thank you everyone for all your help, I never thought I have this many questions in one day. but
I'm slowly getting the hang of navigating around the software.

I did have a few more questions, and attached the image below to help.

1) How to I resize the video so it will fill up the screen, so I won't see the black bars on the side.
Other software like FC7, or Powerdirector, I could click on the window in the view window (see arrow next
to #1 point) and stretch the video to desired shape, but unable to do so.


2) I'm having trouble that when I add the cross fade between video clips, or title cards/with clips to work it doesn't work? I do see the menu pops up right after I insert it, but not sure what I do in the menu to insure it works?

[Jeff Harper]

There are several ways to do this task, but this is one way.

Right click on clip, select pan/crop feature. Right click within pan crop window and select "Match Output Aspect" and you're done.

[Robert Lee]

Thanks Jeff, and if I had to do it manually, do I just resize it within that window?

[Jeff Harper]

Yes. You might need/want to adjust it somewhat after resizing.

Another method to deal with the black bar is to not resize the video, but to put a still image or even a moving image that is 16:9 on a video track below the 4:3 image, which will have the effect of filling in the black bars.

If you choose this method than you would want to choose or create an image that is similar in it's color properties so it blends somewhat. You see this technique used on television. I see it a lot here on the local news.

This method means you are not zooming in on the image and you are degrading your image quality any further by the zoom. By resizing you are, in effect zooming in and losing image quality. I personally use a background image rather than to adjust a 4:3 image, when possible.

The background image "trick" is also useful for photomontages as a creative way of not only filling black bars but giving things a more aesthetically pleasing look. For a photos we often have plenty of resolution to draw from, so resizing is often not an issue from a quality standpoint, but the background thing simply allows us a way to keep the photo in it's original form while keeping things looking extra nice, without the boring black border.

[Seth Bloombaum]

On your second question above, there are several ways to create crossfades in Vegas.

The easiest is to overlap two clips on one track, a crossfade for the duration of the overlap is automatically generated.

Other transitions are similar, you would start with that overlap, then drag a transition onto the overlapping area.

When you have clips on different tracks, for example in your screen shot you have titles above, hover your cursor over an upper corner of the clip. When it turns into a pie-slice, click and drag to create a fade-up or fade-down.

Once you have that, you can drag some other transition onto that fade area of the clip.

Sometimes fishing around and hovering can be a little difficult in a busy section of the timeline, but dragging clip edges around to clear existing overlaps is usually the answer.

These operations are harder to describe than to do, once you get used to them.

Do look at the Vegas Tutorials thread in the "Sticky Threads" at the top of the Vegas forum, many, many resources are linked there.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Robert

I see Jeff has touched on the resize quality issue but I would just render out a minute of your video after resizing it to make sure that the quality is still up to your standard...Resizing from 4:3 to 16:9 entails a zoom by Vegas of almost 40% so your image will degrade more than you think!! If the end result really looks poor then you can also simply consider leaving the footage as 4:3 and leaving the side pillars in place ...Lot's of older TV shows are still 4:3 and most viewers won't even notice the side bars but if you resize to 16:9 you might also cut off heads/feet and could even exclude essential parts of the original image top or bottom just for the sake of having "widescreen" ... check the resized image carefully for not only quality issues but also cropping issues. You might just have to keep it at 4:3

The other thing the guys didn't mention was it's critical to set deinterlacing to either blend ot interpolate in your project properties ...if you have shot interlaced and try to resize your 16:9 images will be full of horrible "jaggies" as the interlacing lines are also resized with the picture!!

Chris

[Jay Massengill]

For a monthly program that I shoot and edit that involves half the material at 4:3 and half at 16:9, I do the following.
The PowerPoint computer screen is recorded in 4:3 (with guide audio for sync) on the presentation computer during the live lecture. I also output the PowerPoint slides as .bmp images at 4:3 in case I need them later to fix any oddities in the presentation.
I set the Vegas session to be 4:3 so the PowerPoint graphics are full-size and un-stretched. The 16:9 video of the presenter speaking to the audience in between the PowerPoint graphics is then letterboxed. I think this looks much better overall than having the graphics either pillar-boxed or stretched.

Touching on another point about fades. I find the cleanest way to fade out from several layered tracks of video, masks, graphics and text is to simply fade in to a generated black solid color on a track above the layered tracks. This prevents needing to adjust the fade timing of the different layers that may change their layered appearance as they fade out if fading each track as a group.

[Robert Lee]

Seth, Thanks for the tip on the crossfades and the heads up on the sticky threads.

Chris: Thanks for pointing out about the jaggies, Depending on the projects, I have left at 4:3
or if clients prefered to resize it, I'll warn them of the pitfalls and make the adjustments as best as I can.

Jay: Thanks for your examples, and reassuring to know of another person who uses the black solid color trick too. Alhtough I haven't done that yet in Vegas, where in the options in Vegas pro where I can grab a black color title card?


Robert

[Don Bloom]

You can also insert a Master Video Buss and just drop in an envelope there to do fades OR if you have Excalibur you can press 1 button and every clip that is highlighted will do a fade in and out or just in or just out. Lots of ways to do things that's why I love Vegas.

Go to Generated Media to grab a solid color if you don't need text on it. It's a tab where the Explorer, project media, transitions etc tabs are. If it's not there then go into View on the top tool bar and look down you'll see it and click on it.