First attempt at a post

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

or the image is portrait and not landscape, 1080 x 1920 ....

If Chuck is correct then you need to get into the practice of taking photos (and especially videos) whilst holding your phone horizontally in landscape mode unless, of course, you need to deliberately take a still in portrait mode.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16538

[degreening]

Hi. That was strange. I did a reply yesterday that looks like it didn't get out ??
Anyway, the gist was: I'm guessing that we're talking 2 different things. The clip in the screen shot is a video moment, and I see, is a 720x480. The videos are recent digitizations of some old taped video.
The images clips are 1080x1920 being off a newer camera and set to that. The image clips in the timeline don't have the black around them.
The truth is that I was paying no attention to these issues when I put the clips in. Clearly I need to. (As I often say, out of my horse world, " we'll get this horse broke before the horse show is over" !!!)
I saw that I have a couple of photo clips in the timeline that have the black framing around them, but they were taken with my cell phone.
Am I relegated to just having to accept the black framing in the video parts ? When it comes down to it, for now, it's not a super big deal. My priority is getting this project out reasonably soon. It's that, over being super perfect about the production.

Again, many thanks for your input into all of this. I'm really impressed with what you have available for us. Big kudos !!! Once I get this project wrapped up, I'm going to be spending a lot of time on your site, just getting a better grasp of the basics of all of this. Thanks again, Dave

[Steve Grisetti]

Your project is set up for 16:9 widescreen video. So, when you use 4:3 video or 4:3 photos in your project, they will not fill the frame, side to side.

There are scale settings you can apply to your 4:3 photos and video so that they will fit side to side, but of course this will mean that you'll lose some of the top and/or bottom of your 4:3 image.

It's just nature of putting a square peg into a rectangular hole.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Hi Dave.

If I have understood the problem correctly you might want to experiment by using two projects as follows.

First, complete a project using the standard definition 720 x 480 video but zooming in (re-scaling) so as to remove the black borders. Output the project as a video format file (e.g .avi?).

In a separate project deal with the 1920 x 1080 images and output that as a file.

Then in a new project import both and carry out any further editing/adjustments there. At least that way you should be able to remove any black edges by scaling the inputs as required. The likely downside will be a drop in quality of the SD (720 x 480) video in the finished project but that might be an acceptable trade-off(?)

[degreening]

Thank you Steve and John. The input is appreciated. I will certainly be taking what you have clarified for me into new projects. The current one, I'll just keep working on through as best as I can.
Regarding the current one, I just have some quick questions:
* I have a couple of spots in the timeline where I have some text only, and at this point, it seems I am relegated to a black background. I'm sure there must be a place where I can have a choice. I just haven't been able to find it.
*In Quick Mode, I can drop Transitions into the whole timeline at once. In Expert, again, I haven't been able to find that.
*When I have some Text settings that I like, is there a way that I can make them a favorite somewhere, or at least re-set the default to one I like ? Currently I'm finding the whole Title thing very cumbersome, as it constantly wants to jump back to a default that has a very large size, and in a font that I don't want. If offhand you know of a tutorial about such, I'd love to have a better feel for that aspect.
Again, thank you for your help. Have a good'un. Dave

[Steve Grisetti]

It's usually not a good idea to ask a bunch of questions at once because it doesn't give us a chance to really expand answers without things getting all confused. It's much wiser to post each question in a separate thread.

That said:
1) You can add background behind a title but putting the title on an upper video track and putting color or video on the track directly below it.
2) You can add the default transition to several clips at once on your timeline by selecting a range of clips, right-clicking and, from the Timeline sub=menu, selecting the option to Add Default Transition Along the CTI.
3) You can not add a custom font or design as a favorite Text Style in the current version of the program.

If you'd like to discuss any of these further, please start a new thread and we'll go as deep into the explanations as you'd like.

[degreening]

Thanks Steve. Got it.