letterbox in viewer

[Rick van den Berg]

lately, as an editor, im getting more and more requests to add a letterbox to the final product. However, they are not shot in that way (which you can clearly see)

So i was thinking, is it possible to add it in a non-destructive way to the LCD viewer, like some kind of lut? would solve alot of headaches.

[Cole Sprague]

Do you mean cropping something shot in 16:9 to 2.4:1? You can add any sort of frame guidelines you want in camera, it's really useful when shooting video for clients that want square and 16:9 for social media, or shooting for a center extraction to leave room for reframing in post.

You can find it under Menu>Overlays>Guides

[Phil Holland]

This is what the in camera Guides are for. You can customize them to whatever your heart's desire. I did a shoot a long while back for BMW for instance where we captured the 2:1 ratio, but put a guide/mask on for 2.39:1 in camera as that was going to be what was used and extracted from the larger 2:1 frame.

[Brandon Veen]

I'll second (third) the use of Camera Guides. I always shoot the full sensor, and at a minimum have a frame guide set up for my target aspect ratio.

I'll add that for recent projects, I've been going into the General tab and setting the area outside the frame guide to be shaded out completely so that I can get a better idea of framing while shooting.
Your clients might like seeing the full frame though, so 50% or 75% shading might be better as they could still see if something is in the frame that shouldn't be (i.e. boom mic).

[Rick van den Berg]

that sounds perfect, thanks guys. ill bring this up at our next production.

[Jan Balster]

We just finished a documentary, which we captured at 16:9 with 2.39:1 frame guides.

I composed all the shots with the 2.39:1 frame. Later the project was edited at 16:9 without the 2.39:1 bars and by then end of the edit everyone had gotten so used to seeing the doc in the 16:9 format that I couldn't convince the director and producers to bring back the 2.39:1 frame.

Moral of that story is that if you want a 2.39:1 frame, shoot the project in that format. Bake it in!

But yes, frame guides are the way to go if you don't want to be stuck.

- Jan