Premiere use with 16:9 converter lens at DVinfo.net

Tom Blizzard · January 15th, 2008, 11:08 PM

I've now had time to work with my new 16:9 converter lens. My Canon GL2 needs this converter to video 16:9 and not lose resolution. However, I've run into a problem when burning a DVD.

I'm sure that most of you understand what a home DVD player does and doesn't do to an anamorphic picture.
So , here goes: I used the 16:9 lens on my GL2, (of course NOT using the 16:9 setting on the camera), I made a test video, and then I burned my DVD using Adobe Premiere Elements. BTW, through some trial and error burns I found it best to select the NTSC fullscreen mode in Adobe just prior to burning the test DVD, here's what I found.

First, I've got to mention that since I have a 16:9 TV, I set my DVD player to the 16:9 setting. This is the correct setting and it has been this way for years. As you know, if you have read this far, this properly displays the anamorphic DVDs using the full resolution that the TV can provide. So, all pictures have the proper aspect ratio and correct geometry.

The burned Test DVD mentioned in the previous paragraph, ( burned in the "fullscreen" mode using Adobe), will properly display on my 16:9 TV with my DVD player in the 16:9 setting. Proper geometry and no black bars. The picture aspect setting on my TV is labeled "wide" which is the 16:9 setting. Everything looks great.

Now here's the problem: Take the same DVD and show it on a standard 4:3 TV with the DVD player properly set on 4:3 Pan-and-Scan setting. The picture from my test DVD is distorted geometrically. The geometry in the picture is squeezed horizontally. In other words, people are tall and skinny. Yes, I know that's what the 16:9 lens does to the picture when it is taken with the GL2. However, as we all know, the player, set in the 4:3 setting should put black bars at the top and bottom of the picture when it corrects the anamorphic picture and gives us a picture with correct geometry...... but in this case, there are no black bars and no geometric correction.

This would not be an issue if everyone had a 16:9 widescreen display. However, I have a wedding coming up and the couple has a 16:9 TV, but both sets of parents have older 4:3 TVs. The couple wants the wedding done in widescreen so there will be no vertical black bars at the sides of their picture when the geometry of the picutre is correct................. see the problem??
Suggestions???

Afterthought......
I did reburn the test DVD using the NTSC widescreen setting with Adobe Premiere Elements and that still results in a squeezed the picture, (horizontally), on a 4:3 TV but it throws vertical black bars up on the sides of the picture of my 16:9 TV. They cannot be removed in any setting on the TV. Plus the geometry is incorrect on all TV aspect ratio settings.

Giroud Francois · January 16th, 2008, 02:18 AM

your assumption that DVD players are resizing 16/9 pictures and adding black bars is wrong.
most of dvd players are just able to zoom a fake 16/9 picture (4/3 letterboxed picture) to suppress black bar in case you indicates you have a 16/9 screen.(some display are doing that too, detecting black bars)
It is possible that some players are able to do what you expect, but that is probably only few of them.
so your best guess is to produce 16/ in a 4/3 picture with black bars if you want to make sur everybody can play it properly
What is strange is that your real 16/9 DVD is not able to pan an scan on 4/3.
this could be that you forget to set the 16/9 flag on in your DVD authoring software.
So by chance direct reading of an anamorphic picture works when you set the display to 16/9, but other modes are not working correctly since the player does not know it is a 16/9 picture.

Tom Blizzard · January 16th, 2008, 07:42 AM

Thanks Giroud for your reply.

I don't think your disagreement helps my issue. I am not talking about a zoom feature. We both might be saying the same thing in different words.

When a DVD movie is in an anamorphic format on the disc and the player is put into the 16:9 setting, the player simply shows that picture as it was encoded on the disc. The player does nothing to the anamorphic picture. The TV will then correct the incorrect geometry by compressing or squeezing the picture vertically and therefore producing a better quality picture, also known as vertical compression. All players, (over here at least), do that.

On the other hand when a 16:9 anamorphic DVD is played on a player that has been set to the 4:3 setting, to be shown on a 4:3 TV, the player squeezes, or compresses, the picture vertically, (not the TV), so that corrects the
geometry and then since there is no picture information above and below the widescreen picture, black bars are shown in the blank space. Of course we are talking SD here and not HD.

I tried the 16:9 setting in elements and that did not solve the problem.

Anyone else use a 16:9 lens attachment on their 4:3 camera?? This must have come up with someone else...

Bob Hart · January 16th, 2008, 12:14 PM

Your image was recorded as a 4:3 image and was vertically stretched optically not elecctronically. Therefore, the bit of electronic magic in the data which tells a video camera or deck to squeeze the footage is not there, so the machinery will simply play it back stretched as commanded.

As far as I know in Premiere at least, for optically stretched footage on the PD150, you have to select "effects" then look for "distort" then "transform" and distort the image so that vertical is 75%, then export this version to file and code to DVD from that for it to play letterbox on a conventional 4:3 TV via a DVD player.

For some unknown reason, when I do this, some colour information seems to be lost. Might be something to do with losing some vertical resolution when de-interlacing. Despite de-interlacing, the apparent vertical sharpness seems to remain better than electronic 16:9.

It will be helpful to de-interlace your footage otherwise when you distort the image, there may be horizontal interference lines in the final image when you export.

I find I have to make two versions, one for 16:9 displays, one for 4:3. Some plasmas have a "zoom" function which enables the "letterboxed" version to play as if in 16:9 "fullscreen"

Don't take my word for it as I am not too knowing on this subject.

Dylan Pank · January 16th, 2008, 01:05 PM

Tom,

the issue is not with premiere, it is when you author the DVD.

You just tell the DVD authoring programme that you are feeding it a 16:9 image, then it will embed the information that the DVD player must output a 16:9 signal that (as long as the clients DVD player is set up correctly) will always play correctly. The DVD should do what you expect, but ONLY if the 16:9 aspect ratio is embedded in the MPEG2 stream.

What DVD authoring programme are you using?

Mike McCarthy · January 16th, 2008, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dylan Pank

Tom,

the issue is not with premiere, it is when you author the DVD.

You just tell the DVD authoring programme that you are feeding it a 16:9 image, then it will embed the information that the DVD player must output a 16:9 signal that (as long as the clients DVD player is set up correctly) will always play correctly. The DVD should do what you expect, but ONLY if the 16:9 aspect ratio is embedded in the MPEG2 stream.

What DVD authoring programme are you using?

If you are using Encore, the fix has to be made in Premiere, since Encore usually locks the aspect ratio of its timelines. Did the footage look correct when you edited it? Assuming not, the way to fix that is to re-interpret the footage, specifically the pixel aspect ratio, from .9 to 1.2 in the project window (for each capture) and use a widescreen project. Assuming you are too far down the line to do this, export a 4x3 squished file, import that into a 16x9 Premiere project, re-interpret it, and export a 16x9 Mpeg2 file to Encore.

If you file looked proper during editing, and you are having issues, or you are using something besies Premiere and Encore, I am not sure what is wrong. One thing I can confirm is that DVD players can letterbox true 16x9 content on the fly. You should not have to add black bars and render them into a 4x3 frame, but that is a workaround if you continue to have problems. You will lose quality though.

Tom Blizzard · January 16th, 2008, 02:20 PM

OK, first, Thanks Bob,
I have just about decided that I agree with you and I will have to burn two versions.

Now to answer Dylan's question. I'm simply capturing from my Canon GL2 into Premiere elements. I've tried the 16:9 settings on Premiere, but hat hasn't helped. suggestions??

Mike,
During editing the picture was squeezed horizontally, (objects and people are taller and thinner than normal), and it was that way after burning using Elements. Of course my TV corrected that in the widescreen "FULL" setting. However when played back in a DVD player set to 4:3 with a 4:3 TV, the picture is still squeezed horizontally.

Thanks for your comments...

Dylan Pank · January 16th, 2008, 03:01 PM

Quote:

During editing the picture was squeezed horizontally, (objects and people are taller and thinner than normal), and it was that way after burning using Elements.

OK, this is the problem. You're basically just sending out a 4:3 signal. The DVD player has no idea that the people are tall and skinny and you're giving it no reason to adapt the image accordingly. If you gave it a 4:3 image it would just stretch that image out to fill the 16:9 frame as well and everyone would be wide and fat.

The problem with your method is it works because your TV or DVD player are not actually set up correctly, it's just by chance that it works for 16:9 footage in a 4:3 stream. The DVD player or TV is ignoring the aspect ratio, and the TV is just stretching everything it gets.

I'm not familiar with Premiere Elements but it's possible it can't handle 16:9 properly. Someone can correct me on this...

As far as I see it you have two options.

1. Buy a better DVD authoring program that can handle 16:9. (such as DVDit6)
2. Shoot in 4:3.

The problem with your method is if the bride and groom have their DVD player and Widescreen TV set up correctly, you'll give them wide images in a 4:3 stream and their DVD player will (correctly) interpret the image as 4:3 and give them a narrow image with black space.

Mike McCarthy · January 17th, 2008, 02:21 PM

All you have to do is reinterpret the Pixel aspect ratio of your final render. It is currently .9 and should be 1.2 but you may have to rerender the entire file to burn that change into the meta data, unless someone knows any tools that can do that directly. The a decent DVD app should be able to manually trigger the 16x9 flag, but I am not holding my breath on Premiere Elements.

Dylan Pank · January 18th, 2008, 04:13 AM

I'm wondering: can elements even output an MPEGstream readable by another DVD authoring prgramme. Even the free DVDauthorGUI can write 16:9 (though it has problems with field order so I don't recommend it) but will Elements only send the signal to a direct to DVD burn?

Tom Blizzard · January 25th, 2008, 12:23 PM

Thanks fellows for hanging in there with me on this....

New development here.
Someone suggested this, but I can't find his reply right now. When I took my test DVD that worked great on my TV in the 16:9 picture setting, over to my son's place and tried to play it with his DVD player set in 16:9 and hooked up with HDMI..... His new LCD 16:9 TV would NOT correct the geometry as my TV had done, and there was no way I could override the setting the TV had selected.

Strange thing is that it worked fine on my 7 year old RPTV with my DVD player set in 16:9 mode and the TV set in the 16:9 mode.

I should add that it did work fine when his player was set on the 4:3 mode, but i can't ask all my customers to change their players to 4:3 just for my videos. Most of them would not understand anyway.......Plus it is no good for the DVD player to do the conversion instead of the TV.

That's why someone, on this forum I believe, told me that it was a fluke that I could get correct geometry from my 16:9 TV if the DVD was recorded in 4:3 mode.

Now I AM at a loss was to what to do with this lens.... Even I'm getting confused. Looks like Dylan is correct, but will it work with PE ??

Well, there is always ebay.........

Dylan Pank · January 25th, 2008, 12:51 PM

The lens is fine, you need to set Premiere Elements up correctly.

I had a play with it on a laptop as my wife is using it at work now. You can set up a project as 16:9 (may have to create a new project for this, and then you need to interpret the footage to a wide screen pixel aspect ratio. Then it will correctly create a 16:9 DVD.

Time to hit the P.E. manual. :-)

Tom Blizzard · January 25th, 2008, 01:08 PM

Thanks Dylan......
Sure thought I did that. Maybe you are right....
In preferences I selected "Widescreen project" and then in the burn setting : " NTSC widescreen"

.....OK here I go again...:-) I want this to work !

Dylan Pank · January 25th, 2008, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Blizzard

Thanks Dylan......
Sure thought I did that...

Not if your footage was appearing in the project squeezed. That or elements is NOT doing what it's supposed to do when it makes the DVD.

Tom Blizzard · January 25th, 2008, 01:47 PM

Eureka !!
Dylan thank you for your kind patience. I am seeing progress!!! You are a very patient person. Are you a teacher???

I don't know, for sure, and there have probably been 4 or 5 other forum members trying to get this into my head, but I sure thought I had done everything you suggested.
Guess not.

I went back, first set project preferences to widescreen, recaptured the short Test footage, went into Properties and clicked on "motion settings" for the clip, unclicked the "constrain proportions", adjusted the scale height to 99 and the scale width to 131 to get a correct geometry, then burned in NTSC widescreen and here's what happened:

On my 16:9 TV it came up correct. (geometry) WOW !!!

On my 4:3 TV with DVD set to 4:3 it came up correct!! (again correct geometry) WOW !!

One thing I don't understand though, even though the geometry was correct on the 4:3, there were no black bars at the top and bottom of the 4:3 picture...... As when I view a 1.66:1 movie on the 4:3 screen. What do you think??

January 15th, 2008, 11:08 PM	#1
Tom Blizzard Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: West Rosemary Beach, Florida Posts: 199	Premiere use with 16:9 converter lens I've now had time to work with my new 16:9 converter lens. My Canon GL2 needs this converter to video 16:9 and not lose resolution. However, I've run into a problem when burning a DVD. I'm sure that most of you understand what a home DVD player does and doesn't do to an anamorphic picture. So , here goes: I used the 16:9 lens on my GL2, (of course NOT using the 16:9 setting on the camera), I made a test video, and then I burned my DVD using Adobe Premiere Elements. BTW, through some trial and error burns I found it best to select the NTSC fullscreen mode in Adobe just prior to burning the test DVD, here's what I found. First, I've got to mention that since I have a 16:9 TV, I set my DVD player to the 16:9 setting. This is the correct setting and it has been this way for years. As you know, if you have read this far, this properly displays the anamorphic DVDs using the full resolution that the TV can provide. So, all pictures have the proper aspect ratio and correct geometry. The burned Test DVD mentioned in the previous paragraph, ( burned in the "fullscreen" mode using Adobe), will properly display on my 16:9 TV with my DVD player in the 16:9 setting. Proper geometry and no black bars. The picture aspect setting on my TV is labeled "wide" which is the 16:9 setting. Everything looks great. Now here's the problem: Take the same DVD and show it on a standard 4:3 TV with the DVD player properly set on 4:3 Pan-and-Scan setting. The picture from my test DVD is distorted geometrically. The geometry in the picture is squeezed horizontally. In other words, people are tall and skinny. Yes, I know that's what the 16:9 lens does to the picture when it is taken with the GL2. However, as we all know, the player, set in the 4:3 setting should put black bars at the top and bottom of the picture when it corrects the anamorphic picture and gives us a picture with correct geometry...... but in this case, there are no black bars and no geometric correction. This would not be an issue if everyone had a 16:9 widescreen display. However, I have a wedding coming up and the couple has a 16:9 TV, but both sets of parents have older 4:3 TVs. The couple wants the wedding done in widescreen so there will be no vertical black bars at the sides of their picture when the geometry of the picutre is correct................. see the problem?? Suggestions??? Afterthought...... I did reburn the test DVD using the NTSC widescreen setting with Adobe Premiere Elements and that still results in a squeezed the picture, (horizontally), on a 4:3 TV but it throws vertical black bars up on the sides of the picture of my 16:9 TV. They cannot be removed in any setting on the TV. Plus the geometry is incorrect on all TV aspect ratio settings.

January 16th, 2008, 12:14 PM	#4
Bob Hart Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: PERTH. W.A. AUSTRALIA. Posts: 4,476	Your image was recorded as a 4:3 image and was vertically stretched optically not elecctronically. Therefore, the bit of electronic magic in the data which tells a video camera or deck to squeeze the footage is not there, so the machinery will simply play it back stretched as commanded. As far as I know in Premiere at least, for optically stretched footage on the PD150, you have to select "effects" then look for "distort" then "transform" and distort the image so that vertical is 75%, then export this version to file and code to DVD from that for it to play letterbox on a conventional 4:3 TV via a DVD player. For some unknown reason, when I do this, some colour information seems to be lost. Might be something to do with losing some vertical resolution when de-interlacing. Despite de-interlacing, the apparent vertical sharpness seems to remain better than electronic 16:9. It will be helpful to de-interlace your footage otherwise when you distort the image, there may be horizontal interference lines in the final image when you export. I find I have to make two versions, one for 16:9 displays, one for 4:3. Some plasmas have a "zoom" function which enables the "letterboxed" version to play as if in 16:9 "fullscreen" Don't take my word for it as I am not too knowing on this subject. Last edited by Bob Hart; January 16th, 2008 at 12:27 PM. Reason: error

January 17th, 2008, 02:21 PM	#9
Mike McCarthy Major Player Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Northern California Posts: 517	All you have to do is reinterpret the Pixel aspect ratio of your final render. It is currently .9 and should be 1.2 but you may have to rerender the entire file to burn that change into the meta data, unless someone knows any tools that can do that directly. The a decent DVD app should be able to manually trigger the 16x9 flag, but I am not holding my breath on Premiere Elements. __________________ For more information on these topics, check out my tech website at www.hd4pc.com

January 16th, 2008, 02:18 AM	#2
Giroud Francois Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: switzerland Posts: 2,133	your assumption that DVD players are resizing 16/9 pictures and adding black bars is wrong. most of dvd players are just able to zoom a fake 16/9 picture (4/3 letterboxed picture) to suppress black bar in case you indicates you have a 16/9 screen.(some display are doing that too, detecting black bars) It is possible that some players are able to do what you expect, but that is probably only few of them. so your best guess is to produce 16/ in a 4/3 picture with black bars if you want to make sur everybody can play it properly What is strange is that your real 16/9 DVD is not able to pan an scan on 4/3. this could be that you forget to set the 16/9 flag on in your DVD authoring software. So by chance direct reading of an anamorphic picture works when you set the display to 16/9, but other modes are not working correctly since the player does not know it is a 16/9 picture.

January 16th, 2008, 07:42 AM	#3
Tom Blizzard Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: West Rosemary Beach, Florida Posts: 199	Thanks Giroud for your reply. I don't think your disagreement helps my issue. I am not talking about a zoom feature. We both might be saying the same thing in different words. When a DVD movie is in an anamorphic format on the disc and the player is put into the 16:9 setting, the player simply shows that picture as it was encoded on the disc. The player does nothing to the anamorphic picture. The TV will then correct the incorrect geometry by compressing or squeezing the picture vertically and therefore producing a better quality picture, also known as vertical compression. All players, (over here at least), do that. On the other hand when a 16:9 anamorphic DVD is played on a player that has been set to the 4:3 setting, to be shown on a 4:3 TV, the player squeezes, or compresses, the picture vertically, (not the TV), so that corrects the geometry and then since there is no picture information above and below the widescreen picture, black bars are shown in the blank space. Of course we are talking SD here and not HD. I tried the 16:9 setting in elements and that did not solve the problem. Anyone else use a 16:9 lens attachment on their 4:3 camera?? This must have come up with someone else...

January 16th, 2008, 01:05 PM	#5
Dylan Pank Major Player Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Portsmouth, UK Posts: 611	Tom, the issue is not with premiere, it is when you author the DVD. You just tell the DVD authoring programme that you are feeding it a 16:9 image, then it will embed the information that the DVD player must output a 16:9 signal that (as long as the clients DVD player is set up correctly) will always play correctly. The DVD should do what you expect, but ONLY if the 16:9 aspect ratio is embedded in the MPEG2 stream. What DVD authoring programme are you using?

January 16th, 2008, 02:20 PM	#7
Tom Blizzard Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: West Rosemary Beach, Florida Posts: 199	OK, first, Thanks Bob, I have just about decided that I agree with you and I will have to burn two versions. Now to answer Dylan's question. I'm simply capturing from my Canon GL2 into Premiere elements. I've tried the 16:9 settings on Premiere, but hat hasn't helped. suggestions?? Mike, During editing the picture was squeezed horizontally, (objects and people are taller and thinner than normal), and it was that way after burning using Elements. Of course my TV corrected that in the widescreen "FULL" setting. However when played back in a DVD player set to 4:3 with a 4:3 TV, the picture is still squeezed horizontally. Thanks for your comments...

January 18th, 2008, 04:13 AM	#10
Dylan Pank Major Player Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Portsmouth, UK Posts: 611	I'm wondering: can elements even output an MPEGstream readable by another DVD authoring prgramme. Even the free DVDauthorGUI can write 16:9 (though it has problems with field order so I don't recommend it) but will Elements only send the signal to a direct to DVD burn?

January 25th, 2008, 12:23 PM	#11
Tom Blizzard Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: West Rosemary Beach, Florida Posts: 199	Thanks fellows for hanging in there with me on this.... New development here. Someone suggested this, but I can't find his reply right now. When I took my test DVD that worked great on my TV in the 16:9 picture setting, over to my son's place and tried to play it with his DVD player set in 16:9 and hooked up with HDMI..... His new LCD 16:9 TV would NOT correct the geometry as my TV had done, and there was no way I could override the setting the TV had selected. Strange thing is that it worked fine on my 7 year old RPTV with my DVD player set in 16:9 mode and the TV set in the 16:9 mode. I should add that it did work fine when his player was set on the 4:3 mode, but i can't ask all my customers to change their players to 4:3 just for my videos. Most of them would not understand anyway.......Plus it is no good for the DVD player to do the conversion instead of the TV. That's why someone, on this forum I believe, told me that it was a fluke that I could get correct geometry from my 16:9 TV if the DVD was recorded in 4:3 mode. Now I AM at a loss was to what to do with this lens.... Even I'm getting confused. Looks like Dylan is correct, but will it work with PE ?? Well, there is always ebay.........

January 25th, 2008, 12:51 PM	#12
Dylan Pank Major Player Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Portsmouth, UK Posts: 611	The lens is fine, you need to set Premiere Elements up correctly. I had a play with it on a laptop as my wife is using it at work now. You can set up a project as 16:9 (may have to create a new project for this, and then you need to interpret the footage to a wide screen pixel aspect ratio. Then it will correctly create a 16:9 DVD. Time to hit the P.E. manual. :-)

January 25th, 2008, 01:08 PM	#13
Tom Blizzard Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: West Rosemary Beach, Florida Posts: 199	Thanks Dylan...... Sure thought I did that. Maybe you are right.... In preferences I selected "Widescreen project" and then in the burn setting : " NTSC widescreen" .....OK here I go again...:-) I want this to work !

January 25th, 2008, 01:47 PM	#15
Tom Blizzard Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: West Rosemary Beach, Florida Posts: 199	Eureka !! Dylan thank you for your kind patience. I am seeing progress!!! You are a very patient person. Are you a teacher??? I don't know, for sure, and there have probably been 4 or 5 other forum members trying to get this into my head, but I sure thought I had done everything you suggested. Guess not. I went back, first set project preferences to widescreen, recaptured the short Test footage, went into Properties and clicked on "motion settings" for the clip, unclicked the "constrain proportions", adjusted the scale height to 99 and the scale width to 131 to get a correct geometry, then burned in NTSC widescreen and here's what happened: On my 16:9 TV it came up correct. (geometry) WOW !!! On my 4:3 TV with DVD set to 4:3 it came up correct!! (again correct geometry) WOW !! One thing I don't understand though, even though the geometry was correct on the 4:3, there were no black bars at the top and bottom of the 4:3 picture...... As when I view a 1.66:1 movie on the 4:3 screen. What do you think??