On Sun, 22 Apr 2001 13:36:03 GMT, Brian Whitelaw wrote:

>Found this newsgroup and David Ruethers useful comparison page* after I
>bought my GL1. When I began to edit my first test videos, I was very
>surprised to see thin black bars on the side edges in my editing window
>(and, of course, later in the QT.mov files). In his review of the GL1,
>David mentions this:"Of importance to editors: the GL-1 image area is not
>720 pixels wide, so wide black bars are left at the picture sides (these are
>not normally seen, but with some transitions and effects used in editing,
>these could be visible and troublesome)." I noted the same bars appear in
>his XL1 images on the comparison page. I've never had this problem with my
>other Mini DV camcorder.
>
>Does anyone know if I can fix this? I am pretty new to this, not
>independantly wealthy and currently use iMovie2 and QTPro for editing. Is
>there a simple crop that can be done somehow? Do I need Premiere or Final
>Cut Pro?
>
>http://www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/camcorder-comparison.htm

(Thanks for the "plug"...;-)
If the video is for TV-viewing, the black bars are not
important except when the image edge is moved into the
area seen on a TV. The black bars can be accepted as
a desireable thing (and augmented with the clip filter,
if wanted, with additional bars at the frame top and
bottom - and these can be any color you want). The same
is true for computer-viewing, though the bars will show
at all times, not just when the frame edges are moved.
As the others pointed out, you can crop or zoom the
image to remove the bars, but generally not without
undesireable effects.