In my last post, I discussed how to prepare your widescreen videos prior to uploading it to YouTube. As you recall, YouTube only offers a video viewport that is sized like a small TV screen, with an aspect ratio of 4:3. In order for your video to get displayed there properly, you must resize and reformat it correctly. To do that, there are two methods you can use: letterbox and pan and scan. Recalling again from my last post, a letterboxed video is one that has black bars displayed at the top and at the bottom. These black bars preserve the video's proportion while keeping it centered vertically. But if you're annoyed by the black bars and want to view the video fullscreen, then you have to resort to the pan and scan method, which I'm going to discuss today.
In the pan and scan method, you are going to fit the height of the video inside YouTube's viewport, then crop off the excess left and right sides. To demonstrate, I'm going to use VirtualDubMod as my video editor. To install VirtualDubMod, read my last post for the instructions.
To do pan and scan, follow Steps 1 to 4 of the letterbox method. Then follow the steps below (screenshots are provided for each step):
offset = (W / 2) - (H * 2 / 3)
In our example video, the width and height are 704 and 396 pixels respectively. Thus, the offset is computed as:
offset = (704 / 2) - (396 * 2 / 3) = 352 - 264 = 88
Round the answer to the nearest integer. So if the result is, say, 77.2253, then make it 77.
Put this computed offset in the X1 offset and the X2 offset fields. Then click OK and close also the Filter dialog box. 1 2
Congratulations! Your video is now pan-and-scanned. You can now upload it to YouTube.
I'm planning to make another tutorial for converting 2.35:1 (a.k.a. Theatrical) videos to 16:9. These theatrical videos can look very narrow when letterboxed in a 4:3 screen. You might want to "enlarge" them a bit by letterboxing them at 16:9. Stay tuned.