How to change aspect ratio of video

I brought in a video from my camera, into VSE. It plays OK but the original is in 4:3 aspect ratio, and Blender plays it in 16:9 ratio. I tried both the Blender animation player and the VSE player, but I can’t find anywhere for me to adjust this ratio.

Set the output format in the Render dimension panel

I did that, but the video doesn’t change in the editor. Does it only change in the final render? That would make it hard to edit if you can’t see how it will look before you render, especially if you want to add text, position titles, etc.


Try using a preset Standard Definition Non-anamorphic (4:3). Use either NTSC for American/Japanese or PAL for Europe/Australia/Asia etc.

Aspect-ratio changes, unfortunately, can spill all the way back to the rendering process … even to the “shooting” and cinematography itself.

You’ll have to be sure that you have rendered at a high resolution, and that you are always going down in resolution. Furthermore, you will be “letterboxing” the final frame: you can’t have it all, and, because the ratio of width to height is different, proportional re-sizing also is not an option. The pixels, themselves, may be square in one format but rectangular in another.

Your mathematical transformations need to either preserve the same height/width ratio, or, through letterboxing or some such, effectively change it to a ratio that is compatible with your target. Otherwise, distortion will occur. (That distortion may or may not be objectionable … it’s your call.)

I’d therefore suggest that you should take one short- but visually-complex shot … at the time that you are composing it and shooting it … and render and package it for all of the formats that you intend to use. “Go all the way” with this one shot. Then, set up native playing-equipment for each potential deliverable, side-by-side, and LQQK at them. Get a firm understanding of what you’ll be dealing with, while you still have time to plan for it. Be sure to turn on the displays of “video-safe areas,” and pay careful attention to them and to what they mean, as you compose and shoot each shot (even in “OpenGL Preview” mode).

It is not, in practice, “just going to be a simple flip of a switch.”

3pointEdit, thank you, that worked perfectly. Just what I needed to know.

You may read this http://www.idealshare.net/video-converter/change-video-aspect-ratio.html