FCP Pan and Scan with letterbox crop
 

I am trying to do a pan and scan of a picture in final cut (http://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_pan_scan.html) while maintaining a letterbox 16:9 crop throughout. When i try to apply the filter it obviously is cropping whatever the picture looks like at the time.

How can I apply the letterbox 'above' the picture so whatever is zoomed/panned shows through the widescreen bars?

I hope I have explained clearly enough.

Any suggestions appreciated.

I have only used pan and scan with real 16:9 sequences and not letterboxed. But I can think of a couple ways to do what you want. I think the best would be to drop your 4:3 clip into a 16:9 sequence. Turn on image+wireframe, grab the corner of the 4:3 image outward until it fills the entire width of the 16:9 frame. Now you can pan/scan using keyframes to move and zoom the image.

This way you will have a real anamorphic 16:9 sequence instead of just a letterbox. If you burn it to an anamorphic DVD then it will fill the screen on a 16:9 TV or else the DVD player will provide a letterbox for a 4:3 TV. But if you want letterboxed 4:3 instead, then just drop the 16:9 sequence into a 4:3 sequence and FCP will automatically letterbox it.

It is a 16:9 sequence, but the picture goes over the letterbox that is there. or am i doing something wrong?

thanks

16:9 sequences don't have letterboxes, they fill the entire frame. You should not be applying the letterbox filter to 16:9 sequences (unless you're doing something specialized, like letterboxing 2:35:1 inside of 16:9).

In my suggestion above, you would not need to use any filters.