I seem to need to set “stretch to fill frame” to “Yes”, or otherwise the video produced has black bars at both top/bottom and sides. I don’t quite understand why, as I’m retaining a height of 1080 when I crop.

Thank you so much for your help.

Jeremy

Check back, and you’ll see that it’s Lock Aspect Ratio, not Maintain Aspect Ratio, that I reference. The Lock Aspect Ratio option is as icon on the far left of the Event Pan/Crop window — looks like a white rectangle with a smaller shaded rectangle and a small arrow in the lower right corner). It controls the actual crop region.

The “Maintain Aspect Ratio” option (under Source), on the other hand, determines how the original source video behaves in the project as a whole.

At any rate, Sony includes a preset that, if I understand you right, does exactly what you want. Near the top of the Event Pan/Crop window, click the dropdown box next to “Preset” and choose 4:3 Standard TV aspect ratio and see if that gets you want you want.
If not, try some of the other presets.

Good luck, write back if you have any questions, and thanks for reading!

Rob

What I’m trying to do is actually rather simpler than you describe. My Sony HF10 produces 16×9 AVCHD footage, but when the shot is of someone standing I often tend to get extraneous material that I need to cut out at the edges. I thought I could just crop it to 4×3 aspect ratio, throwing away one or both sides of the image. But I’m just learning Vegas Movie Studio and I can’t find a way to do it!

Thanks!

A couple things I can think of that might introduce a black area:

• Not duplicating the media. If you only have one copy, the cookie cutter will cut away part of it and leave emptiness.
• Muting one of the tracks with the media. On the track headers, toggle the icon that looks like a circle with a line through it to see if that helps.
• Setting one of the tracks’ compositing mode to something other than Source Alpha. On the track header, click the icon that looks like two film strips and see what’s selected.

If you’re still stumped, you can send me the project file at rob AT vegasvideohelp DOT com (no media files necessary, just the VEG or VF if you’re using Vegas Movie Studio), and I’ll see if I can figure it out.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers
Scott

When you’re looking at the Video Event FX window for the cookie cutter FX, you should have Rectangle as an option for Shape. As you say, though, it’s rather limited. Of particular problem, you can’t adjust the aspect ratio. Best as I can tell, it’s determined by your project’s size at the time the cookie cutter FX is added.

For a rectangle shape, I’d go with Pan & Crop instead. Click the Pan / Crop icon on the event you want to mask, and in the Event Pan / Crop window:

1. Make sure that the Lock Aspect Ratio icon on the left is disabled;
2. In the Source section, change the Stretch to Fill Frame setting to No;
3. In the Position section, enter the Height and Width values you want.

You’ll then have a masked rectangle that’s the dimensions you want, not the ones Vegas wants.

That’s one of the other ways of masking. Another way is Bezier masking, which works similar to creating a path in Photoshop. This method is also accessed in the Pan / Crop window and is enabled by checking “Mask” next to the keyframe timeline.

I was avoiding Bezier masking while writing the article because 1) it can require a whole tutorial on its own, especially when you have to move the mask around and change its size and shape; and 2) it’s only available in Vegas Pro, whereas Vegas Movie Studio users have access to the cookie cutter FX. It is great, however, when you need to make a custom shaped mask.

Rob

Those steps in your tutorial definitely work – I have done something similar in the past.

In any case, do you know some way I can do a cookie cutter shape that’s rectangular? I felt limited by the shapes that are offered in the plugin’s preset list.

You also mention there are other ways to achieve the masking… would be interested to know what else you would recommend!

Cheers,
Scott