4:3 to 16:9 without letterbox
 

is there a way to convert 4:3 footage to 16:9 without using letterbox and without making the footage look like crap in premiere? If there is a way to do it in after fx I can run it through there also.

Thanks

Yes, but your wife will not like it. Stretch the image horizontally and let your wife be the judge of whether that becomes her.

haha. Thank god im single. i will give it a try and see how it looks. if its that bad I will just run letterbox.

The only reason I ask, the website I am putting it on has their video player set to 16:9 dimensions so there will be a pilarbox effect in the video player and the site owner doesnt like that look. But this is only one of two videos with the 4:3 problem. The rest were filmed in 16:9

is there a way I can edit the whole video with letter box enabled. Then Run it through after fx and just crop out the black bars and expert the video in 16:9? The original video dimensions are 720x480, the video player on the website is only 525x326 but that includes the video control bar. So I think that would work if it is possible to do that

Drop the 4:3 in a 16:9 project and scale it to fit without distortion. This means you will loose the top and bottom of the video. You do however can manupilate the horizon (position up and down) to get a good composition.

Correct Ann, but you lose quality and vertical resolution by scaling up.

never mind what I originally typed. Harm answered me.

Yes, but it seems to me that in this case there's no need to scale up if ultimately the required resolution for the website is lower than 525x326.

Edit and export your video in it's native SD NTSC 4:3 format.
Find out the exact resolution the video's going to be on the website (without the player's control bar ect.)
Import the 720x480 render into After Effects, make a new composition from it, change the composition's size to the required lower resolution. Now you can follow Ann's suggestion but you will be downscaling instead of upscaling.
Don't forget that web video has a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio while NTSC DV does not. So make sure your Composition Settings/Interpret Footage settings are set up correctly in after Effects, otherwise you may unwittingly introduce stretching.

If you're concerned with getting the absolute best quality, Avisynth will give you a better resize/crop quality, but After Effects is easier and quicker and the quality difference will most likely be hardly noticeable.

Now thats the answer I am looking for! Thanks Jon!