Changing 16:9

I have footage that was shot in 16:9 on a VX2000. When you watch it on a normal TV its squished together as expected. Can anyone please please please tell me how i can stretch the footage out and letterbox it so it look decent on a regular TV. I will be doing it on an AVID if possible.

Thank you in advance!

[Bradley Miller]

I would also like to know how to make a "letterboxed" NTSC video output from Premiere as well if anyone knows the procedure. (Still learning Premiere.)

[Rob Lohman]

I think the procedure went something like the following:

- Create a 4:3 project (NOT 16:9)
- Import your footage, it will look squashed
- Stretch it down vertically by 1,77 times
- Then output at your full resolution centering
your image vertically

Good luck

[Bradley Miller]

Thanks Rob. I would've never thought to import in 4:3.

Do you know the exact command to "stretch" the video in Premiere?

[Bill Ravens]

In Ulead MediaStudio pro there is a 2d filter that will allow redefinition of the image size. You can set this to anything you want. The default borders are black when the image size is less than the frame size.

[Rob Lohman]

Brad,

I don't recall from memory... Lemme fire up Premiere.

Hmmm... seems to be some combination of changing
your project's resolution and adding the resize video
"effect".... I cannot help you further, play around....

Good luck!

thanks a ton Rob!

[Bradley Miller]

Thanks Rob. Here's what I found after playing with Premiere using your tips.

A/B editing mode.
Lay the actual video to be unsqueezed and letterboxed on track B.
Lay black video on track A that has had it's inpoint set near the end of it. Place it after the track B video.
Go to the transitions window and select "stretch over".
Open up the stretch over settings and adjust both start and end to the same percentage. Select border "none".
Drag the stretch over effect into the transitions row on the timeline.
Stretch the video track A backwards to extend it over your video track B.
Render.

Now since I don't have a monitor hooked up right now to test the quality, is this killing resolution doing it this way? Does anyone know?

[Rob Lohman]

You are loosing resolution, ofcourse. You are going down
to a lower resolution! But as I said somewhere else, if you
use blackbars you will ALWAYS loose resolution. But you
might get an extra impact with your movie (looking widescreen)
that warrants the resolution loss...

Personally I would not do 2.35:1 widescreen... That just
cuts too much rsolution. I stick with 1.85 or 16:9 (allmost
the same)....

Glad you found it in Premiere though!

[Bradley Miller]

Thanks Rob, but I don't think I worded that too well and I'm not sure if I know of a good way to word it better, but let me try.

What I meant was, given the "picture" area of the screen (forget about the black bars, am I losing resolution within the black bars. Or in other words, let's say that on a 27 inch monitor that the image is "X" inches tall. If compared to a full screen export with no black bars, if those "X" inches were measured, would there be resolution loss specifically *because* of the way Premiere is compressing the image?

[Rob Lohman]

Same answer (or I still do not understand your question).
When you do a stretch, resize, resample, compressing whatever
you want to call it you are loosing resolution! BUT (and this is
a big BUT), you will not loose more resolution then any other
way to achieve this (assuming that Premiere is using a high
quality resampling routine, otherwise look at third party
plug-ins). Or if you shot in normal 4:3 and cropped you would
have the exact same resolution loss... The only way to not
have resolution loss is staying 4:3 and no black bars or use
anamorphic files.

Hope this cleared some up a bit. The most important
thing is still how it looks to you. When I am shooting
for a widescreen image I tend to shoot 4:3 because I
have the option to move the image up & down "under"
the black bars to see which composition I like best. Shooting
anamorphic with DV does not give you any choice lateron
in the edit process.

[Bradley Miller]

That's exactly the answer I was needing. I don't suppose you know how to move the image vertically in Premiere, do you? ;)

Thanks.

[Rob Lohman]

As far as I know (and I've not done extensive researching
on this) that is not possible in Premiere. I use After Effects
for that. I import my Premiere project in After Effects
(it will loose all transitions and fades (I only use the last
one)) and import one of the three picture masks I made
in paintshop/photoshop. I have one 16:9, one 1.85:1 and
one 2.35:1. Black bars with full white middle section that
AE puts the picture in. I put the mask above all my other
footage and select a Stencil Luma (I think it was this one)
transfer mode for it. This allows the underlaying video to
shine through in my white section.

In After Effects moving footage is as simple as selecting
it on the timeline, then go to your monitor window and
hit the X (where the lines cross). Now you can drag your
current scene wherever you want while the black bars
stay at the same place (I lock these down btw to make
sure I don't do anything funny with them lateron). The best
is to first click the X, then press shift and hold it. Now you
can only move horizontal or vertical (this is what you want).

Easy as 1,2,3.... :)

Now I don't know if this is possible in Premiere. Perhaps it
might. Two advantages to do it in After Effects is you have
good keying of motion if you want to "pan" or "move"
accross your image and you got excellent color correction
tools in this package as well! Only downside is that it does
not import transitions and fades, correction, it imports them
and creates footage for them. It only does not work. Some
settings needs to be changed or something, I haven't tried
changing it yet.

Hope this has helped

[Rob Lohman]

Oh.. one other thing. I've also made 75%, 50% and 25%
gradient masks in paintshop/photoshop. These allow me
to fade part of the image out... Pretty neat for low light
scenes and stuff...

[mdreyes23]

I found this post, searching on widescreen. I basically had the same questions.

But I did some fooling around in adobe premiere 6.01 and found a video effect that seems to do everything you were asking Brad and belvo. But easier. Atleast it seems that way. I don't see any dowsides?

Basically there is a 'Transform' Video effect included in Adobe Premiere 6.01. It has the After Effects icon next to the name.

Use this 'Transform' video effect on your full footage. You can scale the height to squash the image vertically. You can also set a different position.

This seems easier then adding the black video and then doing the stretch over transition setting.

But maybe there are some downsides? Like rendering time. If I use the Transform video effect, maybe rendering takes longer?

Can somebody fill me in? I've been trying to figure this out for awhile and have been searching for answers but haven't found any. I mean I've found many answers but I'm trying to determine which is the best way or the right way. I've heard things like using the stretch over/black video...or using a track matte and after effects, etc...

Forgot to mention that when you scale the height, black is automatically added to where there is no image (therefore...black bars)