Hi. I'm wondering how I can go about loping off the tops and bottoms of my 4:3 footage to fit into an anamorphic sequence. I had a 4:3 sequence where I matted all my 4:3 footage to 1:85, and im wondering how I can go the distance and just cut off the edges to make it fit an anamorphic sequence. Thanks.

There are three ways to convert:

1) crop the bottom and top reducing the vertical height (not an option for standard output formats like DV or DVD, only usable for web delivery etc.)

2) add black bars to simulate the widescreen look

3) scale the footage vertically to create a fake anamorphic signal

Which one are you looking for?

Personally my favorite way to do this (when going to DVD) is to add the black bars during the edit, then scale the video into Anamorphic for output. It makes the editing easier (because you can shift the video behind the bars up or down as needed) but makes great Anamorpic.

As a side note, when a client asks me to shoot in widescreen, this is the method I use (since I do not have a true 16x9 camera).

If I understand your question properly, I think the following is the answer:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=281863&postcount=2

Another method is to creat another sequnce and check of the anamorphic setting in the browser. Next, drag your 4:3 sequence into the timeline. Next, open the 4:3 sequnce you just added, in the viewer, select the motion tab and set its scale to 133%. This will expand the frame size so that it fills the 16:9 frame plus allows you to shift the frame view up and down in the canvas and add keyframes to have it move up or down to avoid cutting off the tops or bottoms of your shot.

If I understand your question properly, I think the following is the answer:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=281863&postcount=2

This seemed to work pretty well for me, just be sure to remember to set the sequence to anamorphic, otherwise it will render out as 4:3.