maintaining frame size when zooming into stills

Yes, I am working in a 16:9 ratio. When I zoom in the aspect ratio does seem to be maintained, but since I am zooming in the image is obviously getting larger, much larger than the 16:9 video sequences adjacent to it. So, if I export the movie to Quicktime, you will see the video sequence at the proper size on the monitor with black borders at top and bottom, and then when the zoomed still comes up in the sequence it will fill the monitor completely. I just want make sure the still fits into the same frame size as the video whether it is zoomed or not. In other words, I would like to crop that zoomed still so that it is within the same bounding box as the video. Hope that clarifies it. Thanks so much.

I am new to this, so my explanations may be confusing. Let me try to explain my issue again. When I produce my final product I would like to it to be at a 16:9 ratio. From your last response it sounds like I should be able to achieve that through exporting in quicktime. All my video footage is already at 16:9. For the stills I am resizing them in Photoshop (taking into account the square to non-square pixel conversion) and bringing them into Final Cut Express. When I add zoom motion to those stills the image then fills the 4:3 view in the canvas. My video already looks letterboxed in the canvas, and I would like the stills to look the same.

Can this be solved simply through the exporting process or do I need to modify something in FCE? Whatever the solution, my goal is to maintain the highest resolution possible. Thanks.

Alex

Tom,

Finally solved this problem by using the widescreen matte filter. All video and still images are now consistently letterboxed. Thanks.

Alex