Question / Help I genuinely need black bars (for once)

[PeggleFrank]

There are plenty of threads about removing black bars, but I actually need black bars for this scenario. The YouTube player's aspect ratio doesn't match up with the ratio of the thing I'm recording, and said thing doesn't actually support any standard resolutions (it's not meant to be fullscreen), so the best I can do is get it close to a 16:9 aspect ratio and add black bars. However, I have absolutely no idea how to do this.

For compatibility reasons, I'm using monitor capture, and I'm capturing a sub-region in the top left corner of my monitor. Game capture and window capture don't work. I also can't distort the image whatsoever, so stretching the recording isn't an option. The recording is lossless (even the slightest bit of quality loss destroys the purpose), and I don't know of a way to edit the recording with black bars without reducing quality. Windows Movie Maker degrades the quality due to the formats it supports, so most other options are either too expensive or unknown to me.

Help would be appreciated. To clarify: all I need is a way to record with black bars that will act as filler and make the recording 1920x1080. The thing I'm recording is not 1920x1080, and I can't distort it or reduce the quality in any way. I'm not streaming for obvious reasons.

 

[Jack0r]

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

The YouTube player automatically adds black bars so that videos are displayed correctly without cropping or stretching, no matter the size of the video or the player.

For example, the player will automatically add pillarboxing to 4:3 videos in the new 16:9 widescreen player size. If the player is re-sized (i.e. when embedded on another website), the same process takes place so that 16:9 videos are letterboxed when the player is sized to 4:3. Similarly, anamorphic videos will be automatically letterboxed when shown in either 16:9 or 4:3 sized players. The player can only do this if the native aspect ratio of the video is maintained.

You can adjust the fit of your video in our player after uploading your video by using formatting tags.

If letterboxing is added to a video before it is uploaded (i.e. in the case of creating a 4:3 video from a 16:9 master), the widescreen player will add pillarbox bars too, resulting in black bars all around the video (windowboxing) and a bad viewing experience (see the diagram below).

I would recommend to set OBS to the resolution of whatever you are going to capture.