16:9 HD Piece, how do I export as a 4:3 file with letter box bars for a 4:3 screen?

[Jesse Morgan]

I have had a look through the the forums and I couldn't find an answer. I have a piece that is 16:9 and I want to export it 4:3 with black bars above and below. This is so I can upload it to a site that plays videos in the 4:3 format. The site keeps stretching my current 16:9 piece to fit the screen instead of adding the boxes.

I edit on FCP Studio 2. Please help!

Jesse

[Benjamin Hill]

Sorry no one has taken the time to answer your question already.

You can use Compressor or Quicktime conversion to do the trick, Compressor is easiest in my experience.

If you need to upload it to a site find out what format they want. If it was say, YouTube, they seem to like 4:3 Mpeg-4 so I export my files directly from FCP (Export Using Compressor) and in the Inspector window, use the Geometry tab to adjust Output Image Inset (Padding).

Use the Preview window in Compressor (you can see before/after) to make sure it is looking the way you want it to. Then, submit!

Should be a piece of cake, I do this all the time.

[William Hohauser]

Drop the 16:9 sequence into a new 4:3 sequence. FCP with automatically letterboxes the original sequence. Now you can use Compressor to make a web file.

[Tom Hardwick]

Originally Posted by Jesse Morgan

I have a piece that is 16:9 and I want to export it 4:3 with black bars above and below. Jesse

This doesn't make sense to me Jesse. If you have a 16:9 film then you want to mask out the sides, not the top and bottom. But in Premiere it's pretty easy to shrink the image and then add black black rectangles top and bottom so that you don't lose picture image o the upload. Will take some time rendering and you'll take a quality hit I suspect.

tom.

[Benjamin Hill]

Originally Posted by Tom Hardwick

This doesn't make sense to me Jesse. If you have a 16:9 film then you want to mask out the sides, not the top and bottom. But in Premiere it's pretty easy to shrink the image and then add black black rectangles top and bottom so that you don't lose picture image o the upload. Will take some time rendering and you'll take a quality hit I suspect.

tom.

It makes sense if you understand that he is trying to deploy his 16:9 content within a 4:3 presentation and preserve the original composition. The way Discovery Channel does this, for example, is letterboxing. Fox on the other hand does the centercut and loses the sides of the image.

Of course there is going to be a quality hit going from 16:9 HD to a 4:3 letterbox SD signal but that's the price of maintaining your widescreen and sometimes the resolution hit is negligible.