OK, sorry this took so long, but I hope this helps. In the following set of instructions, I will discuss how to work with Vegas to get rid of pesky black bars on the side of a video. This can be evident on crappy transfers, and while typically it got covered up by overscan on most TVs, that becoming less and less the case with newer flatscreen TVs. Here is the source video we are working with:
notice the black bar that is evident on the right side of the video. There are 3 things we can do to get rid of this. (1) Crop and Zoom, (2) Crop and Stretch, and (3) Crop & Replace with black bars.
(1) Crop and Zoom - If the source image quality is good, and you dont mind losing a couple pixels on the top and bottom of the video, this may be the most desirable method to use. Once you have the video all setup in your timeline in Vegas, click on the
Event Pan/Crop button:
That will open a new window for you to work in. First, you will see a series of buttons down the left hand side:
Make sure
Lock Aspect Ratio is ON, and
Size About Center is OFF. All of the options in the column to the right of that should be fine at the default settings. Next right click on the video image in the window and click on
Match Output Aspect:
Then drag the corner of the box with "F" in it (dotted line around the video preview) so that it only covers the true image area (not the black side lines):
Notice on the Vegas video Preview window (bottom right of image above) that the black bars have been removed, and the image is slightly zoomed in. You are done. That is method #1.
(2) Crop and Stretch - This crops off the black bar(s) and stretches the video to fill the screen.
NOT RECOMMENDED!! This will change the actual aspect ratio of the video and it will look stretched. If you insist on using this method, here is what you do:
Once again, click on the
Event Pan/Crop button. On the options on the left, under SOURCE, change the
Maintain Aspect Ratio to NO (YES is the default):
Once again, right click on the video image in the window and click on
Match Output Aspect. Then drag the side of the box with "F" in it (dotted line around the video preview) so that it only covers the true image area (not the black side lines):
Notice on the Vegas video Preview window (bottom right of image above) that the black bars have been removed, and the image is stretched to fit the window. You are done. That is method #2. Again, I do NOT recommend this method as it will make the image look squished or stretched.
(3) Crop & Replace with black bars - This method crops off the usually ugly black bars, recenters the image, and adds crisp black bars to the side. If you dont want to zoom in at all, you may want to use this method.
Once again, click on the
Event Pan/Crop button. This time, make sure
Lock Aspect Ratio is OFF, and
Size About Center is OFF (the buttons on the left hand side). All of the options in the column to the right of that should be fine at the default settings. Next right click on the video image in the window and click on
Match Output Aspect. Then drag the side of the box with "F" in it (dotted line around the video preview) so that it only covers the true image area (not the black side lines):
Notice on the Vegas video Preview window (bottom right of image above) that the black bars have been replaced with crisp black bars, and the image is centered the window. You are done. That is method #3. Most ideal if you dont mind (neat pillarboxing) black bars and you dont want to zoom in any more.
If you need to do more extreme cropping/resizing (such as taking a letterboxed movie, and making it truly anamorphic), I highly recommend using Virtualdub to do that as a first step, prior to editing. There are some different resizing algorithms that you can play with to get the best image quality. Vegas is more than adequate for the application described in this post. I hope this helps.
