HOW TO: Anamorphic Crop SONY VEGAS and PREMIERE PRO.

[Daniel Rutter]

Hey guys;

I'm posting this real quick tutorial for KingDucky, but I figured some of the newbies and maybe some of you who don't already know... just how to apply an anamorphic crop to your footage. There are a few ways to do this, I will show you three ways. One will involve Adobe Premiere Pro (I happened upon this by accident), and the other two will involve Sony Vegas Pro 10 (you can do it in most versions as far as I'm aware).

ADOBE PREMIERE:

First off, start a project and fiddle with the settings as you see fit for your project. Most common is 1920x1080 24p, but I tend to use 1920x1080 25p for my work.

Go to your Title menu, Create a New Title and select "From a Template". A little box will appear. Find the drop down titled "Mattes" and select "Matte letterbox". When you first drop this in, it will most definitely need tweaking.



As you can see from my example, it's cutting off heads. This is fine, we're going to click one of the black "bars" (use the mouse pointer button), and click the BOTTOM line around the bar and drag it up to shorten the height of the bar. Do this only if you believe your crop is too much, or you want something smaller than the rough 2:35 aspect that it is. If you're happy with the amount you have, close the title box off and drag your new title from the project window onto your timeline ON VIDEO TWO or higher, depending on the amount of video tracks your footage is using. Once that is done, drag the corner of the new title track to the end of the timeline so it covers your footage (see below).



From the example above, you can see there is most likely too much of the top half of the frame being cut off. This is fine, because we will reframe the footage.

Select your video (one at a time if you have more videos in your timeline) and click the effects controls window. Click the "Motion" twirl-down and find the "position" settings. You should see the word "position" with a keyframe button and some numbers next to it. Take note of those numbers, we're gonna use that to reframe. You will want to ignore the first set (in my example below, those are "940"). Select the numbers next to it, hold and drag with your mouse until you are happy with the frame. Don't drag too far though, you only have limited room to move



And above is my crop. As you can probably tell, the crop is a little much for the footage... but you get the idea. This can be changed by editing the title track you dropped in earlier.

Sony Vegas methods will be posted next.
ExampleDroppedIn1.pngExample2.jpgExample3.jpg

[m.lomibao]

nice one mate....cant wait for the vegas method !

[KingDucky]

Yay!

[Daniel Rutter]

Sony Vegas Pan/Crop Method

This one is pretty straight forward and extremely easy. My timeline settings are "1920x1080 25p"... and in this one, your frame size is actually pretty important. This determines how accurate your crop will be. I believe this method replicates "2:35" aspect... if you add about two pixels or so to the position height, you can get pretty close to "2:40".



Drop your footage into your timeline, and right click the video track. Select "Pan/Crop" and wait for the popup to appear. Copy the settings in the image below (click on the numbers, delete whatever is in there and type what it says on the image).



svpc-1.pngsvpc-2.jpg

[Daniel Rutter]

This one is somewhat different to the last one I posted, although it does require you to use the above method as well.

Start yourself a new project and set the settings to reflect those in the image below. You can change framerate and other settings, just leave the frame sizes the same as below.



If you look in your preview window you will probably notice your footage does not fit, and has black barts on the sides of it.



This is fine, just copy the settings below (tweak them if your frame doesn't fit right).



PLEASE NOTE: This method has one small flaw, which isn't really noticable on the final render or played back on a TV. But, it still bugs me while I'm editing. If you look at your preview window, you will see very small black lines on either side of the footage. If you find a way to get rid of this (I tried everything) then share it

And there you have it... anamorphic crop. Use this sparingly though, don't apply it to something that doesn't need it. Most people are shooting short films in just normal widescreen (16x9), which is fine. If you want to make your "film look" pop, then use this method with some colour correction.

sv2ndmethod-2.pngsv2ndmethod-1.pngsv2ndmethod-3.jpg

[Daniel Rutter]

I don't know how admins go with stickies, but would this be worth a sticky to save future threads being opened about this?

[drapeama]

That's nice from you taking the time to add all the info.
I personally prefer to do all the visual work in AE and then using Vegas to edit my final cut. But that's personal.

[KingDucky]

This needs to be a sticky!

[Daniel Rutter]

Thought I might give it a chance to come back to life for any guest or members that might be interested.

Does anyone use any of these methods??

[drapeama]

Does anyone use any of these methods??

I'm not. Simply because I've been used to "mask" the image with 1.85:1 & 2.40:1 .PSD templates.
But you did a good job with these tutorials.

[Daniel Rutter]

I just linked a friend of mine to this method. So, for those new to the forums and having issues with anamorphic crops and "Squeezed pictures"... Try this method.

[Steve_Karl]

I'm not. Simply because I've been used to "mask" the image with 1.85:1 & 2.40:1 .PSD templates.
But you did a good job with these tutorials.

I'd like to hear about that method also if you have the time, and including the templates would be awesome.

[drapeama]

I'd like to hear about that method also if you have the time, and including the templates would be awesome.

I don't want to hijack Daniel's thread, but I'll ask you to continue here, and I'll add the details (if needed) there.

[Daniel Rutter]

Use this sparingly though, don't apply it to something that doesn't need it

I'm serious about this by the way.

For a long time when I first started doing videography, I thought the crop was a great selling point. The truth is, nobody really cares. If they want a video with crop, they'll hire a pro to film anamorphic. When I said use it sparingly, I should have said "use it at the right moment". There are things that look reasonably good and professional with the crop, such as promos with "filmic" sequences in them. I recently used a 2:21 crop on a promo clip that doubled as a music video. Whenever the singer/band members were shown on the screen, I'd have a completely different colour grade on the shot, with the crop and a little something extra (a "flare" that mimics those you get with real anamorphic glass).

Wedding videos don't need it, unless you're choosing to shoot and edit your wedding video as an actual "film". Most short films don't need it, especially if you're not doing something with exceptional camerawork. If your film is crap, a film crop won't change anything (see this for example). In fact, there are many Hollywood features being shot on RED, Alexa etc that are plain old 1:85 aspect (widescreen) and still look "filmic".