Create colored letter box

I'm trying to create a letterbox effect on a 4:3 clip. When I use the letter box filter it compresses the image making all my people look fat. So I then tried the cropping tool to get the effect. I repositioned the image (so as not to cut of tops of heads), then cropped top and bottom. This works fine but now I want to change the black border to a different color. I tried appling a color matt on top of the image but then I just got a full frame of the color. I looked at an older post that Derek answered explaining how to add the color matt, then apply a shape mask filter and invert it, but I can't get that to work either.

I know I have seen a tutorial with an easy way to do this but of course I now that I need to use the effect, I can't remember what tutorial it was. I'm sure there are several ways to acheive this colored letterbox effect. My goal is to have the letterbox on various clips and be able to change the color of the letterbox border and add text in the borders. I do not want to distort the image so my guess is the only way around that is to size my image first before adding any effect.

Can someone please explain the steps I need to take to get this colored letterbox effect?


Thanks

> When I use the letter box filter it compresses the image making all my people look fat.

That doesn't make sense. You've probably using the wrong filter. All that the Widescreen Matte filters do is put black bars on.

> I looked at an older post that Derek answered explaining how to add the color matt, then apply
> a shape mask filter and invert it, but I can't get that to work either.

Gotta be more specific. Why doesn't it work? How doesn't it work?

To repeat the instructions:

1. Create a Color Matte.
2. Put it on a video track above your video clips.
3. Apply a Mask Shape filter to it. Invert. Make Horizontal 100. Use the Vertical value to adjust the amount of letterboxing.
4. Change the colour of the Color Matte to your liking.

Alternately, a much more troublesome way to do this is to put a solid Color Matte under all your video clips, then crop the clips top and bottom to reveal the colour bars underneath.


www.derekmok.com

Wow, that even confused me.

In short:

You're on the right track. The color matte should go below your video, not above it. I think that's the effect you're looking for.

And a little advice from a design perspective -- If you notice, everything on TV that's letterboxed either uses black or white for the matte. It's simple. Clean. Doesn't distract from the message.

It makes me nervous that you want to use a color. I'm downright scared that you want to change between them. Use your power wisely, grasshopper.

> And a little advice from a design perspective -- If you notice, everything on TV that's
> letterboxed either uses black or white for the matte. It's simple. Clean. Doesn't distract from
> the message.

Gotta say, Mike, that's what I'd thought until last year when an editing student of mine showed me it can be done. He used multicoloured letterbox bars all over his fairytale short and almost rescued his abominable script. Almost.

Here's a screen grab on how to do it. (Don't blame me, blame Jude -- she got me into "Picture Crazy" mode!)




www.derekmok.com

Go Derek! Pictures r0X0rs my .. wassnames.

Thanks everyone.

I tried all the methods and they worked just fine. The big problem was that I was putting the color matt on top of the clip not below.

The easiest solution was to use the color matt on the bottom layer, then crop. I was also able to add type to the colored border and it looks sweet.

>That doesn't make sense. You've probably using the wrong filter. All that the Widescreen Matte filters do is put black bars on.

You're right. I discovered that the people looked fat because I had the Anamorphic Squeeze filter on instead of the Wide Screen Filter.

> And a little advice from a design perspective -- If you notice, everything on TV that's letterboxed either uses black or white for the matte. It's simple. Clean. Doesn't distract from the message.

Yes, I know that used to be the case. But here in Detroit, I've been seeing a lot of retail spots using the colored letterbox border to hold pricing information. I've also seen the border color switch within the same spot. In my case, I'm not working on a commercial -- jusy trying to spice up some rather boring footage in a 5 minute video.

Thanks for all the suggestions. You save me a ton of time. I would have spent hours searching through all my resources to find that info. I've now started an "effects" cheat sheet for quick access in the future.

One more thing -- Does anyone know where I could find a FCP keyboard shortcut list that I could print out? I have one that came with FCS but the font is so small I can't read it. Seems like somewhere on the internet I could find a list of keyboard shortcuts that I could enlarge and print.

Thanks again for all your help,

Shelley Rae

Invest $11.00 in a laminated Keyboard Keyguide by Loren Miller. Best money you will ever spend and it will be in your office before you know it.

Get it in the lafcpug store

[www.lafcpug.org]

Michael Horton
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derek, if i follow correctly you referred to jude as "she" i always assumed jude was a dude...

jude, can you chime in and clear that up for me? - not that it matters of course...

> derek, if i follow correctly you referred to jude as "she" i always assumed jude was a dude...

Nope. Jude is a lady.


www.derekmok.com

I can confirm this. I just went and did a quick test and it seems to be true. Maybe FCP 6 will have a fix.

>not that it matters of course...<

Heh. Not that there's anything wrong with that.. [Sienfield]

thats nutty, for the last like 2 years i just assumed that jude was a dude -

"hey jude" - now i gotta redraw the picture of you that i had in my head.

Just sing the lyrics to the song.

"Jude looks like a lady..."