Wide-screen video gets letterboxed
Some camcorders offer a special shooting mode called 16:9 video (that is, wide-screen format). When you import this 16:9 video into a DV Widescreen project, iMovie HD sometimes wants to letterbox it, adding horizontal black bands above and below. Since the video is already 16:9, thats probably not what you want iMovie HD to do.
The letterboxing begins as soon as you switch from Camera mode to Edit mode and click on a clip. The workaround is to not switch modes after youve imported your video. Instead of switching to Edit mode, stay in Camera mode. Save the project, quit iMovie, and turn off the camera. When you reopen the project, the video will stay 16:9.[\quote]