Changing Aspect

[bobbyd]

I have some old 4:3 VHS footage. Is there a way I can change this to 16:9 and still maintain the aspect ratio?

[Rusty]

If you place 4:3 footage in a 16:9 project by default Edius will fit to height.
Use Layouter (F7) to Fit-to-width and Edius will maintain the original aspect ratio.

[dpalomaki]

Maintainingn aspect ratio assumes you are content to crop some of the top and/or bottom of the image. You can also use the Layouter to keep the areas of interest appropriately centered on the screen.

[bobbyd]

Yes to your question. So if I stretch this out to 16:9 aspect ratio will be maintained?

[dpalomaki]

Per page 250 of the manual be sure the "Preserve aspect ratio" box in Layouter is checked.

[DigitalDave]

Bobby, Imagine you have a circle in the middle of your 4x3 picture. If you just pull the left and right sides to stretch your picture your circle will become an oval.
Only by doing as other have said and Zooming to fit the width and then slicing from top and bottom will you fill the sides and not distort the AR. You will need to add sharpness as well.

[bobbyd]

Thanks for the help.

[createmedia]

The apparent resolution will drop by stretching and cropping it.

Another technique is to leave the original 4 by 3 clip on track V2 filling the height, (auto) and the following method is often used by broadcasters.

Copy the clip and add it to V1 underneath

Use layouter to stretch V1 until the width fills the frame.

Apply soft focus filter to V1 and make the V1 clip very soft.

The soft background fill on left and right of the original clip will follow the V2 content and be in context visually.

Mike