Correcting DV Footage with Black Bars for a DVD

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Ricardo,

I have no experience with the DVX100, but when using the older Sony VX-2000 camcorder in 16:9 mode, it did add black bars to the LCD display since it was a 4:3 display, but the recorded video on tape was still 16:9 widescreen.

If your camera was set to record 16:9, then that is what it should output then. Did you capture via 1394 to Premiere, and did you use a DV Widescreen preset when capturing?

Make sure that the Premiere sequence is DV widescreen, and if so, try to right-click a clip in the bin and find “Interpret Footage” and change the pixel aspect to 1.2 and see what happens. Note that DV footage (NTSC) is always 720×480 whether 4:3 or 16:9, only the pixel aspect changes.

Regarding interlacing, I would leave it alone for editing and making a DVD. If you then export to any format for the web, at that point you can tick the “Deinterlace” box in export settings, and set fields to “Progressive”.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Ricardo Pontes lima filho]

Thanks for the reply Jeff!

The way I exported the footage from the tapes was at my college’s computer lab, there they use Final Cut Pro 6, but I rarely worked there so I didn’t knew much about operating the cameras or Final Cut. When I exported the tapes, I tried a variety of settings, and I exported both in DV 4:3 and DV Widescreen, and they resulted on identical footage, but with different pixel aspect ratios, meaning that the Widescreen export also had the black bars and everything looked stretched. Like you said, it seems to me that the DVX displayed the black bars and also attached it to the footage, either that or I exported it incorrectly while using Final Cut Pro.

I did as you said and changed the pixel aspect ratio and set the sequence to DV Widescreen but it just resulted in the 4:3 footage being stretched with the black bars.

Any other suggestions?

[Jeff Pulera]

The most important question that needs clarification is…was the footage for sure shot in 16:9 widescreen or not? That makes a big difference.

Like yourself, I don’t have a lot of Mac/FCP experience so that adds additional variables if you did the capture using FCP. Are you running Premiere on a Mac or PC? If PC, what do you have, .mov files to work with? A PC would capture .avi files.

Jeff

[Ricardo Pontes lima filho]

Hey Jeff, thanks for following up!

The files I have are FOR SURE 0.91 pixel ratio, 4:3 DV. The image contained in these 4:3 files is a 16:9 image letterboxed. What I’m trying to figure out is the best way to resize these files to be DV Widescreen by removing the black bars in the files without having to manually scale each shot. Meaning, I wanna remove the black bars.

I took some screenshots that may help you understand:

Also, the files are .MOV

Thanks again!

[Jeff Greenberg]

It looks like whomever shot it ‘added’ black bars to a 4:3 picture – giving the illusion that it’s widescreen, but the media is all 4:3. There is no way to ‘remove it’ without blowing it all up.

I’d just edit the piece, nest the timeline into a SD widescreen timeline and then blow up the nested timeline. And yes, you’ll be making the clips soft in the blowup. Alternatively, you can blow up one clip and then copy/paste the blowup to the rest.

Best,

Jeff G

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[Ricardo Pontes lima filho]

Hummm, that’s actually a pretty good idea, I don’t know how I didn’t think of that haha. I’ll edit it in it’s native format then I’ll nest the sequences and fix them on the final sequence. Thanks a lot for your time guys!