• Adobe Premiere Pro

  Black band on top & bottom of video

  Posted by Gautam Deva on November 5, 2019 at 6:10 am

  Hi, I am working on some 4k footage in Adobe premiere pro. I want to export my edit as a full HD(1920 x 1080) proreshq file. When I modify the output settings in the export media window, black bands appear on the top and bottom of the video. This is the case with the output file too. Why does this happen and how can I get rid of these bands? Please let me know if anyone has a solution. Thanks.

  Gautam Deva replied 6 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  John Williams

  November 5, 2019 at 11:10 am

  4K Footage comes in a variety of ratio’s.
  1920X1080 is a 16:9 ratio. Therefore if you put footage into a sequence that has a different ratio you will see ‘black bars’ either at the top or bottom known as ‘letter box’ or on the sides know as ‘pillar box’. You get this even if you Scale Footage to the size of your sequence as Premiere doesn’t want to change the ratio and squeeze or stretch your image to fit the new ratio.

  So what is generally best to do is bring in your 4K footage and scale it down using the ‘Effects Controls’ panel. As the ratio is different in your case you will loose a bit of the image on the left and right side but remove the letter box bars at the top and bottom.

  If you want to avoid this in future, make sure you shoot at a 16:9 ratio (although having extra resolution on the sides can be useful if you later wish to reframe / tweak the shot.)

  Hope that helps;)

  John Williams

  Soho Editors
• 

  Gautam Deva

  November 5, 2019 at 3:50 pm

  Thanks John. That’s helpful to know.

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