How to apply a 16:9 matte to a movie in Final Cut Pro/Express

How to apply a 16:9 matte to a movie

CGM DVE Vol.1+ (and CGM DVE Complete) contains a widescreen generator which is very useful for adding a widescreen matte to standard video. The benefit of this workflow is that the matte is independent of any move or scale operations which are done to the footage. The matte will be rendered in realtime and it's possible to switch off the matte temporarily while cutting and previewing.

Cut your movie in the timeline. It doesn't matter how many tracks you need for your compositing. Then place the CGM Widescreen video generator (located in Video Generators / CGM DVE Text) one track higher as shown in the screenshot.

If you want another type of matte, open the controls of the Widescreen video generator and define the type you need.

Ready!

Movement	This automatically animates the Amount slider which is particularly useful for those using Final Cut Express but can also save time for Final Cut Pro users.
Amount	For example if animated from 0 to 100, the matte moves out.
	CGM Widescreen
Type	Select here the matte you need.
Color	Choice of which matte color.
	Border
Border	Here you can switch on a border on the top and bottom edges of the video and also set its width.
Color	Choice of which border color.
Feather Edges	Instead of using a color, the area between the video and matte can be feathered.

This is the result.