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I do a fair amount of baby picture montages for wedding videos but as we all know, the rectangular photos are easy to
frame; the vertical photos are not (without radical cropping and loss of area in the picture).

I have all the software Macrosystem makes and only know how to use about 25% of it, so maybe I'm missing something but...
How do you "size" vertical black boxes on either side of a vertically-shot photo?

The rectangular or horizontal photos are easy: just use "Cinemascope", but what program would you use to put these
vertical black borders on a "tall" photo?

In past, I ran my camera signal through an old Panasonic mixer and was able to accomplish this, however it would really
be nice to just do it in the Cassie.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Alan

Alan, do you have Photo studio 2? If not try it out in Demo mode. Its a very good photo editing software. If not, and you just want to put verticle boardes on a picture, you could use several methods. One way is to use Ultimate Spice Box (USB) Mask in the Image processing screen. Select Base 1 negative as the mask. Set boarder to zero. Set boarder type to color. Select your color to taste. Set the stop position to taste and finally set the aperture time to zero.

Photo studio 2 is the way to go though.

Instead of framing have you tried using Photostudio 2 to add animation? Movement makes still photos far more interesting. With PS2 you can add zoom and scan or a combination with smooth acceleration and deceleration. If you watch TV progammes you rarely see a stationary still picture.

Martyn
Dalco uk

May I also suggest using the COLLAGE function in PS 2. Make a background. Then extend the picture atop the background. Just a thought.

CB PAINT also offers the opportunity to adjust, make borders, crop, fix via a histogram, colorize any picture using Photo Transfer's function "FOR OTHER PROGRAMS."

Just my thoughts.

You may be able to accomplish this with "BB Copy Rectangle" (not Move
Rectangle!), a transition that comes with BlueBox World. The simplest way
would be to create a black background clip. You could actually use any color
or pattern or even another video clip - just make it the exact same length as
the clip you want to center.

Go to New in the Edit screen and choose Black and set the length to the same
length as the video clip (photo still in this case) and add the new black clip to
the storyboard.
Now add the video clip to the right of it on the storyboard.
Go to the Transitions screen and add "BB Copy Rectangle", making it the
same length as the clip.
Click "Source Area" and then Size and Position a rectangle large enough to include
the subject (just the vertical photo in this case).
Click "Destination" and position it where you need it to be. Make a scene of this.

If you want experiment you can try the following:

You can re-center the subject of a clip, soften the edges, and add a drop
shadow (or other effect) over the background of your choosing. First use the
above process using a Black background and create a scene we'll refer to as S1.
Next, create the desired background S2 with the same length as S1 and
add it to the storyboard.
Now add S1 to the right of the background in the storyboard.

Go to Transitions and add BlueBox World, making the transition the same
length as S1.
Under Bluebox Mode (left column, top box) choose Black and 20% tolerance.
Under Alpha (left column, middle box) choose a transition of around 4 and
leave the alpha at 100%.
Under FX (left column, bottom box) Select Effect = Shadow, Color is black
with Alpha at 50%, Direction is your choice, Distance = 13%, Transition = 4.
Under Select Area (right column, top box) Full Images = check.
(You can start with these values and adjust as needed)

Alan,

All the previous suggestions are valid, but if all you want to do is "mask" off the sides of a vertical static photo you can do that by going into Special, Rectangle, choose your color, then choose Position/Size and use the Position to set the Position at the top left hand corner, use Size to set the vertical rectangle to cover all the area to the right of the photo you want covered, then Ok, Ok and it will make a Scene of that.

As long as the photo was fairly well centered, just with this new Scene again go into Special, Rectangle, Position and move it over to the other side, Ok, Ok and you have what you asked for.

Obviously, if the photo was not perfectly centered you would want to tweak Size in the second process to fully mask out the portion you want masked out on the right side.

PS - To make it projector proof (or even monitor proof anymore with the varying displays) I would also use Black Border from Effectpack 8 on it as well to cover the overscan portions of the video real estate.