Aspect Ratios

If your brain easily breaks down, melts, crumbles or explodes, I warn you, this may involve a slight need to do a little bit of mathematics…

1. Find out what your video editor wants. This is important, because if you don’t do this, you can’t do anything else with this. If you know you haven’t messed around with any default settings in your video editor, I can tell you that the default aspect ratio for Windows Movie Maker is 4:3 (four to three). This means that for every four pixels you have in the width, you have three pixels in the height. I’ll get into that later on. WMM produces at 320 by 240 px (pixels). Sony Vegas, the default aspect ratio is 3:2 and produces at 720 by 480 px. You can change these if you want to use a size that fits into YouTube more nicely, but you’ll have to do the math on your own that way.
   • Changing the settings for WMM: Click Tools in the menu bar. Go down to “Options…”. A dialog box should appear. Make sure you’re on the Advanced tab. Go to the center, and see where it says “Video properties”? It’ll have a description, and it will have a button for NTSC or PAL. Leave those alone. Under that, it will have the option for 4:3 or 16:9.
   • Changing the settings for SV: Click File in the menu bar and click “Properties…” The dialog box will pop up, and make sure you are on the Video tab. Right at the top, it will say “Video template” and it has a drop down box. This one obviously has many more options than WMM, and it may get a little confusing selecting what you want.
2. Adjust your screen cam. This is where the math crawls up behind you, taps on your back, and says “I want to be your friend…” (And you scream, “NO!!! Go away!”, right?) o_0 Yeah, I don’t really like doing it either, but it’s nothing a calculator can’t do. What you’re going to do is take any size with the correct ratio, divide or multiply the height and width by the same number, use those numbers in your video size, and see which ones best fit what you’re filming. You already don’t like it, yes, I feel you… I’ll throw some examples your way.
   • Let’s say we’re working with that 4:3. You can start out with the numbers 4 and 3, simply, if you like, and multiply. But I’m going to start with 320 and 240, because that’s the output size in Windows Movie Maker. I’ll plug those two numbers into HyperCam, in the width and height boxes under the “Screen area” tab. Remember that the width ALWAYS comes before the height when you say “this number by that number”. And hey, you know what? 320 by 240 takes a shot of what I need to film on my screen. But for practicing purposes, let’s make it a little smaller, which means I need to do some division. (To make it bigger, multiply.) Grab any number you want. But if you don’t want a huge change, don’t get a huge number! I’m going to choose 2, which will cut the size in half. This will divide into BOTH numbers. (You can also use decimals, but you might have to round.) I punch this into my calculator. 320 divided by 2 becomes 160, and 240 divided by 2 becomes 120. My size is now 160 by 120 px. I put this into my HyperCam again, and…Oh, dear. It’s pretty small. You can go back to 320 by 240.
   • Now you know that, I’ll do another one, with less explaining. Let’s use the default Sony Vegas ratio this time. I’ll do this in two ways. I’ll take the size it already gives me, 720 by 480. It’s very much too big for filming a clip, unless you want to show a big chunk of your screen. Let’s reduce it. I’ll divide by 2 again. Now I have 360 by 240. Hey, that covers a pretty good size. But I’m sick of dividing. I want to multiply now! (Yeah, just trying to kick in some enthusiasm that doesn’t really work). Well, I know that the aspect ratio is 3:2. I’m going to put that in…Wow, that—that’s…It’s barely anything. I’m going to need a bigger size than that. So I’m going to multiply 3 by 120, and 2 by 120. And I got 360 by 240 again. I must like that size.
3. Lights, camera, action. Now edit this, please. You showed those big numbers who’s boss and that you know how to manipulate them the way YOU want them. You are now a black belt in film preparation. WTG!… Now you just move on, take your clips with you, stick ‘em in your video editor and fix everything up. The math is over.