FFMPEG Letterboxing with Colors - Week 15

The only thing I really got out of this tutorial was the letter boxing at the top and bottom of the video to make it look wide screen.

66 cd Test2
67 ls

68 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB -vf pad=100:50:0:0:blue letter2.VOB
# The pad command within the ffmpeg documentation online : http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-doc.html does help with getting a top and bottom border on the video. However, the blue above doesn't set anything to a color. It stays black. It seems that with most command line tricks with ffmpeg, -vf is used and then the command = something in quotes.

69 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB -vf pad=0:0:100:50:blue letter2.VOB
70 ffplay letter2.VOB
71 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB -vf pad=0:0:720:480:blue letter2.VOB
72 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB -vf pad=0:0:0:0:blue letter2.VOB
73 ffplay letter2.VOB
74 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB -vf pad=0:0:0:0:red letter3.VOB
75 ffplay letter3.VOB
# the code in the multiple lines above gives me several errors when it comes to the width, height, x, y. To work it has to be 0:0:0:0. Color still doesn't work. I looked at letter1.VOB, letter2.VOB, and letter3.VOB and they all turned out the same. I guess the above lines did work somehow even though I got errors. I will play only the first one-letter1.VOB.

76 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB drawbox=10:20:200:60:red@0.5 letter4.VOB
77 ffplay letter4.
78 ls
79 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB drawbox=10:20:200:60:red letter4.VOB
80 ffplay letter4.Vob
81 ls
82 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB drawbox=0:0:0:0:red letter4.VOB
83 ls
84 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB "drawbox=0:0:0:0:red" letter4.VOB
85 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB "drawbox=0:0:0:0:red@0.5" letter4.VOB
86 ffplay letter4.
# the lines above are when I tried to draw a border of color which the documentation does not provide enough of an explanation on becuase it refuses to work.

87 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB pad=640:480:0:40:violet letter.VOB
# As an alternative I decided to set the color just using pad like the documentation suggests which didn't work either.

88 history > letter.txt