by Qyot27 » Tue Jun 27, 2006 9:21 pm
This is best explained if you're looking at Premiere, of course.
You'll need to create a Black Video clip (or have a Black-colored still image) and have two instances of it on the timeline, both on higher tracks than the clip you want to letterbox (i.e. if the clip is on Track 1A, use Tracks 2 and 3 for the two Black Video clips).
When you go to the Motion settings...(right-click on the Black Video clip, Video options ->Motion)
A) Position both Start and End frames above or below (both above or both below) the Visible Area.
B) Find out what position you want the black bar to be. This is expressed as a value on a Cartesian plane, as far as I can tell. Specifically, it's the vertical (Y) setting (at Info #1 is at X, Y). Both Start and End frames need to have the same horizontal (X) value.
To quickly set values, click on or the nearest you can to the vertical line close to Time for the Start frame and then enter your settings in the boxes below it; the vertical line at the end of that same timescale is for the End frame (this is much easier to do with the End frame since it doesn't actually require clicking on the timescale).
C) The Start frame should be off the visible area entirely, and the End frame is where you fill in the height percentage. This takes a bit of tweaking to get set right. That's all there is to it.
D) Repeat this process for the other bar, making sure you just use the inverse values (1 instead of -1, or -20 instead of 20, etc.) of the first to position it. That way, it looks uniform.