3:4 aspect ratio to 16:9?

[Jesse Kane]

Thank you, looks interesting, but I don’t want to stretch the image.

[Jesse Kane]

I won’t make the dvd, but I’m unclear as to the process you mentioned.

[Jeff Pulera]

You said you had “taped the lens” when this video was recorded, so perhaps viewable area is not properly 16:9? If you have a 720×480 video (4:3) cropped to 16:9 and drop it into smaller 16:9 frame, should not need enlarging…

Can you please post a still frame from video so we can see what you are actually working with, and can also try things with on our end?

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Blaise Douros]

Then you’re stuck with setting up a 16×9 sequence, and scaling up your video to match. You’ll lose the top and bottom, but that’s no different than if you’d letterboxed it.

[Jesse Kane]

screenshot2018-07-17at9.28.46pm.png

Is this how to upload and image??? Crazy.

So here (I think) is the image.

[Jesse Kane]

I understand, that is what I am here asking… HOW to make that custom sequence, what I should set it to.

[Jesse Kane]

I’m sorry, I misunderstood, here is the frame.

cocktailhoursv1copy020.jpg

[Jeff Pulera]

I guess I misunderstood from the start, when you said you had taped the monitor. Some folks will put tape on their camcorder viewfinder to allow them to frame what they are shooting as widescreen and I somehow conflated that to you having a widescreen image letterboxed into the 4:3 video clip.

Now I see of course that you simply have a 4:3 video clip, period. If you put that into a widescreen sequence, you’ll have black bars on sides and if you scale up to fill the screen, you lose top and bottom and degrade quality. That we’ve already figured out and you don’t care for those options.

As you intend to put this clip online, and you want to have 16:9, here is what I would do:

Create a custom 480p widescreen sequence, as per YouTube recommendations –

• 854 x 480 pixels
• 29.97 fps
• 1.0 Pixel Aspect
• No Fields/Progressive

Drop your 4:3 clip onto that Sequence, and do not allow change of sequence settings. Use Adobe Motion to Scale Width to about 125% to fill frame (uncheck Uniform Scale first). Add Gaussian Blur and set Blurriness to about 35% or to taste. That is your new background image.

Now drop SAME clip onto V2 track directly above the blurred, stretched background. Since you have an old analog capture clip, the left and right edges may have dark lines/garbage on them which stands out against the background and adds unwanted definition to the edge. Add Crop effect and just remove a few pixels from left and right sides to clean it up.

This is a very common technique used on television these days, when using old footage in a 16:9 program, and for instance on the news when they are showing cell phone video that was shot vertically, they do this to fill out the image sides without having huge black bars. The viewers don’t even notice this trick, as the eyes are focused on the subject matter in the center of the screen. As the background/edges match the actual video, it blends together and is far less noticeable that black bars. Almost invisible in practice.

The effects added to your clips can easily be copied/pasted to other clips in the sequence, so you only need to set this up once.

Photos here to show Sequence Settings and final image example. Hope this is a workable solution. And the reason for the 854×480 is because “DV” video uses rectangular pixels and for computer/online viewing we want square pixels with 1.0 aspect, and 854×480 provides the proper viewing result versus DV Widescreen which is 720×480 using 1.2 pixel aspect (pixels are wider to create illusion of widescreen, however computer video players do not take that into account and show as 4:3 basically, based on assumed 1.0 pixel aspect).

When you export from Premiere as H.264, use YouTube 480p SD Wide or similar preset that maintains same settings as sequence.

Thanks

Jeff

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Or…I’d suggested yesterday to create a 360p sequence (640×360) and drop clip into it and Voila! you are done and have actual widescreen16:9 video. You said you still had to scale quite a bit when you tried that, and that makes no sense at all, must have done something wrong. When I drop your clip into the 360p sequence, it fills the screen at 100% (no scaling added) and just a little is cut off top and bottom, and you can of course adjust the framing of image up or down a bit as desired without affecting quality.

Sequence settings and finished example below, quite quick and easy!

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jan Janowski]

Do it all the time.
I set session for 16×9, and put a layer of 16×9 video on layer 1,
Then put 4×3 video as layer 2, cropping if it’s real wide blanking.

This way. You don’t have to find a 4×3 display.