A friend and I have been trying to create a simple little plug-in for After Effects and Premiere. What the plug does is simply stretch a frame to the desired aspect ratio.

The idea behind the plugin is simply that sometimes, it can be advantageous to use the full sensor in 4:3 and then stretch in a 'clever' way afterwards. The included images show an original image in 4:3, stretched 16:9 and stretched 16:9 with a distortion grid overlay and the protected region shown in green. The plugin is quite customizable (stretching, size and position of protected region plus some bells and whistles) but the default settings should work in most cases.

It currently only works under Windows but in both AE and Premiere (6.0 or later), we expect to compile it for Mac eventually.

If you feel like this is a good idea and you would like to help us with testing, send me a short PM. We would like feedback on: bugs, usability, suggested features and settings.

As this is a hobby project no money will be involved :-)

General comments are also welcome