I am stupid..

I accidentally shot 30 minutes of footage in 4:3 when I meant to shoot it in 16:9 to match the rest of the footage I shot earlier for the same project.

The best way to fix this is to re-shoot.. but in my case, that is going to be almost impossible... So, in Premiere, is there any way I can add my own letterboxing to the 4:3 footage and therefore turn it into 16:9 by blacking out the top and bottom?

thanks

Uhhhhh try Interpreting the Footage. Import. Right click on your imported clip, select, Interpret Footage. Change the aspect ration in there.... that should do it. I don't know if it'll look that great. I'm not sure. It takes some dicking around with, at least in my experience.

Also make sure you export in widescreen

if you do that I suspect it will stretch out the footage to fit the widescreen aspect ratio. This will make anyone in the clip look like me - fat and round

Of course, if your clip is a background plate and you can get away with that then great. It will be your best option.

Create your project with a widescreen preset so it has non square pixesl. Import your 4:3 footage. Check that it remains 4:3 and square pixels byt using the interpret footage option. (Different to above Ibeleive because I want it to STATY 4:3 and NOT toi interpret it as widescreen). Add it to your 16:9 sequence. If it's being interpreted correctly then the image swill notbe stretched.

Now for the really easy bit. Simply set the zoom factor of the clip so it fills your screen. Remember though, this is effectively a digital zoom so you will lose definition, not to mention the top and bottom of your image. Of course you can reposition it to lose onl;y the bottom if you like.

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

Alan, I tried to do what you said and it works without streching the footage, but I get very sharp interlacing artifacts it seems

What's an "interlacing artifact"? It;s nto an expression I use so want to clarify what you mean exactly. Any chance of a screen shot to show it?

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

here is an example of interlace artifacts
http://justsayyes.files.wordpress.co...interlace1.jpg

But, I figured out that I only see them when playing back in Premiere. When I export the movie, the interlace artifacts aren't apparent.