Good day!

I'm new here, and this is my first post. I've been reading the site for about a week now. There is tons of useful info on here that has helped me already, and for that, I'd like to thank every member of this board! :)

My first question has possibly been answered many times before, but please, bear with me.

I currently have a home editing set up with Pinnacle Studio 8. I've been wondering if there's a way to take footage shot in 4:3 and to crop it to 16:9, 1.85:1 or 2.35:1. I keep reading about not using aspect masks in camera and to crop in post. If anyone could tell me if Pinnacle has this ability and how to do it, I would be in your debt.

Thanks for your time. Cheers.

Whether you can "crop" it depends on your output format. For
example if you want to go to DVD you cannot crop the footage
since it requires the full resolution. You *can* add black bars
(letterboxing) to any of the 3 formats you mentioned.

For guides and masks see my letterbox page (www.visuar.com/letterbox/calc.htm)

Now if you output to the Web for example you can definitely
crop to a lower resolution (ie widescreen, as we've done with
our Lady X project [see link in signature]). You can use my
calculator that I linked to above to calculate how many pixels
you would need to crap (ie, the amount of vertical resolution
that should remain).

Studio 8 really only supports 4:3 input and output. Studio 9 adds 16:9 support. I do not know of any support for 2.35:1 from Studio and it is not in the current versions of Liquid Edition. Otherwise, it is very problematic to try changing formats in Studio.

You might find something at Mike Shaw's page http://www.mikeshaw.co.uk/

So if I film something on a Canon GL2 in 16:9 mode, put it into Pinnacle 8, edit and then burn to DVD, the image on the DVD will still be squished?

Thanks for the responses! :)

DVD is a unique format. What they did when they created the
spec is put the power at the player instead of the creation stage
(like video).

What this means is the following. You can encode video for DVD
both in 4:3 and 16:9 (even mix it on a DVD, but not in the same
movie). The player then decides on playback to do:

1) send the anamorphic 16:9 footage to the TV

*OR*

2) unsquash the footage and add letterboxes before sending it to the TV

How does it know when to do which? This is done in the setup
of your DVD player. You can tell each DVD player whether you
have an anamorphic 16:9 capable display device at the other
end. If you indicate this it will send the signal, otherwise it will
letterbox it.

4:3 encoded video is always send as is.

Now when you encode to MPEG2 you should indicate to the MPEG2
encoder your footage is in anamorphic widescreen 16:9 format.
Then when you author your DVD with an authoring program you
will also need to tell it that this is the format you want.

If you do not do this the player will think it is 4:3 and it will look
very weird. Not all MPEG encoding and DVD authoring software
support this, however.

I hope this explains it.

<<<-- Originally posted by Charles Lyndon : So if I film something on a Canon GL2 in 16:9 mode, put it into Pinnacle 8, edit and then burn to DVD, the image on the DVD will still be squished?

Thanks for the responses! :) -->>>

Yes, I believe this is true. I was able to fix a piece of 16:9 video in S8 once, but only trimming it shorter and saving the AVI. "I think" that worked without changing the format. But if I tried anything else, it was squished.

S9 has been a cheap upgrade at Best Buy and Fry's. hint, hint. :)