Premiere 6.5 widescreen problem - can't get black bars, footage squeezed
 

Hi,

Yes, I know Premiere 6.5 is a blast from the past. But it's a program that I like to use, works well, many of us still use it and it's simple.

I have asked this before here and actually figured it out, but now I forgot! I'm sure someone will know how to do this (sorry, haven't checked in here for a while).

I have some footage shot in widescreen (16x9) in 780x480 NTSC. When you export this footage it comes out at squeezed, unless I capture the video at widescreen (meaning the pixels) and I export it first at 854x480, put it back into Premiere and then render as DV 0.9 as a help file from Adobe said to do.

HOWEVER, I know I got the solution from here before. I can't remember what it was or how to do it. I did a search on all my posts here and the solutions presented don't work.

I seem to recall there may have been a 'transform' filter or something that I used? I can't remember.

So the question is, how do I take this 16x9 aspect footage, put it into premiere, and have it spit out a letterboxed 4x3 with the video content looking right?

Thanks.

right-click the clip in the project, chose "interpret footage" and chose your desired aspect ratio. Closest thing to your transform filter.

I think. This is how it's don't in after effects 6.5 (again, a blast from the past)

Russ

Thanks. Tried that. Didn't work. It still spit out a squeezed image in 4x3 export in both exporting in DV NTSC and DV NTSC Widescreen.

It made it look fine on the time line though, not that it made any difference in the export.

ok, try double clicking the video in the preview window (the one linked to the timeline) and you will get transform controls with handles in each corner. Try scaling the footage down so it fits in your 4:3 window with black bars at the top and bottom. Then render out as 4:3.

Yes, I did find that, through the Video Effects window --> Distort --> Transform.

I can apply the transform filter to the footage and then change the horizontal height to get the right aspect in letter box.

But I've found two different suggested values to do this with, on the net. 75% and 83%. Which is the right one?

I took test footage recorded in 16:9 720x576 aspect ratio 1.422 and drop it into a 4:3 project in Premiere, then scale it down using uniform scale to 75.5% the footage touches the sides of the monitor area and leaves black bars at the top/bottom.

I exported to avi as a test and it was still 16:9 in a 4:3 project.

Try that.