Converting 4:3 to 16:9

[Ian Woodward]

I am making a documentary on a Czech composer in 16:9 aspect ratio.

There is some footage I shot two year’s ago of the composer’s last house in Central Bohemia which I would like to utilise in this project - but it was shot in 4:3 aspect ratio.

It would save me a lot of unneccesary travelling, when I'm next in CZ, in August, if there was some way I could convert into 16:9 widescreen the minute or so of 4:3 material I wish to use – ideally without “stretching”, though could live with that if necessary because a stretched house is not quite so hard to live with as, say, someone’s stretched face!

I’ve been told that Pinnacle Studio have software to do precisely what I am after, but I can’t find it.

Can anybody help?

I edit on Pinnacle Studio 14 Ultimate.

Ian Woodward

[Roy1]

Sony Vegas Movie Studio platinum 9 does this quite easily, in fact I have just completed a fifteen minute video using this conversion programme. You have to do each clip in the video seperately you can't convert a whole video with one application. On second thoughts if the video to be converted is presented as one long clip, perhaps you can do it in one application. My tutorial doesn't mention that possibility, but now that I've thought about, I'll give it a try.. Hope this info. helps.

[Ian Woodward]

Thanks, Roy1.

You mention Sony Vegas Movie Studio platinum 9 but, as I mention in my initial enquiry, I use Pinnacle Studio 14 Ultimate.

Would, I wonder, one specific editing tool be compatible with another specific editing tool?

My particular challenge is to insert five or six video scenes shot in 4:3 mode into a project which is otherwise wholly 16:9 – but only after the 4:3 aspect ratio has been converted to 16:9.

To prove a point to myself, and to eliminate a futile option, I did some test editing and inserted a few of the 4:3 shots into different parts of a 16:9 sequence – and, lo and behold! all this did was to transform the 16:9 images into “CinemaScope” format.

What I am looking for is a solution which can work on Pinnacle Studio 14 Ultimate.

Ian

[Roy1]

I bought the Vegas programme simply to burn Blu-ray Discs. I normally edited with Adobe Pro 2 but Adobe pro 2 doesn't burn Blu-ray. I found that Vegas accepted programmes edited by adobe and burnt the Blu-ray successfully. Vegas accepts nearly all formats such as AVI Mpeg 1 and 2 etc. So if you have any of these formats on your Hard drive made by Pinnacle, Vegas would accept them. It won't cost you anything to find out. Do as I did and download a 30 day trial of vegas and see if it works. If it does you can buy Vegas for around £40 from dealers. Hope this helps.

[Ian Woodward]

Thanks again for the helpful info.

I'll try this if all else fails.

But I think I'll wait momentarily in case anyone can guide me towards the dedicated Pinnacle Studio facility that's apparently available for the 4:3-to-16:9 conversion I'm seeking.

Ian

[tom hardwick]

Ian - just so's I can get this straight - you want to insert pillarboxed 4:3 scenes into your (predominantly) 16:9 film, right?

I don't know your Pinnacle program but an easy way is to include pillarboxed 4:3 material as PIP (picture in picture). But it sounds as if stretched shots would go unnoticed at times and could well be less audience jarring than the switch to pillarboxing.

tom.

[chrisk]

Converting 4:3 to 16:9 without stretching of the image necessarily means losing some of the top and/or bottom portions of the image. It is nice to be able to select the part that you want rather than the default centre section. I don't use Pinnacle but having seen others use this program, it does seem to have similar features, but probably using different notation, to Premiere. This is how I do the conversion im Prem Pro 2:

Ensure that the project is opened as a widescreen 16:9 project.
Import the 4:3 file into the project and put it on the timeline. This will appear as a 'pillarbox' in the 16:9 area.
Select the clip and scale it by 1.33. The image now shows the centre section of the original in 16:9 format.
Using motion, move the section up or down for the required image. This can move over time if needed.

Chris

[granfer]

I haven't used Studio plus for some time but I once had to resize the whole of a file I derived from an NTSC video.played on a PAL recorder (thankfully it was an old black and white film!). When I saved it, it was off centre and too small. I think this is how I did it...
Chrisk has the right idea in Premiere, but in Studio you start the same in 16:9 which is what most of your material is. When you Import your 4: 3 material it will appear on the Timeline in the 16:9 frame but with black bands either side.
Select the clip you want to resize. Then choose "toolbox"/ "video effects"/"studio plus RTFX"/ "2D editor". This gives you a control panel that lets you SIZE horizontally and vertically, CENTRE horizontally and vertically and even add borders.
More detail than that I cannot give as I do not have the program any more. You'll have to experiment. Best of luck!!

[Ian Woodward]

Thanks, everyone, for offering three very different solutions for converting 4:3 to 16:9, all of which sound good.

I’ll give it a whirl, Chris and Granfer, over the weekend when other demands are not taking up so much of my time.

Yes, I realised that the top and bottom parts of the pictures would be lost in the 4:3-to-16:9 conversion. That’s fine by me.

In my 4:3 aspect-ratio days I always screened the resulting burned DVDs at 14:9, anyway, as a sort of compromise between 4:3 and widescreen.

Tom, what you suggest isn’t what I had in mind but, funnily enough, you’ve come up with an excellent effect I hadn’t actually considered: I do like the idea of picture in picture, or PIP.

I’ll see how that works out.

Cheers.

Ian

[Ian Woodward]

Just to say I’ve succeeded in converting 4:3 to 19:6, so that the converted 4:3 can be used with widescreen material without corrupting the latter.

And it was so easy.

I followed your explanation, granfer, and it worked a treat the first time. I couldn’t believe it: I thought I was going to have to suffer first!

I also did picture-in-picture, Tom, and that looks good, too, for the scenario I have in mind.

Many thanks to you both, and to Roy and Chris, for your offers of help.

Ian

[granfer]

Glad to be of help... and to find my memory has not gone completely!
granfer