Exporting Letterbox without Bars

[Robert Gilbert]

The pop up appears over the timeline when I try to drag in footage that’s not compatible with the sequence settings. I tried to override it but the results were bad.

The black bars appear on VLC Video LAN player, but also everywhere else, including re-importing into Premiere.

Here once again, after the encoder showed a perfectly trimmed Output image, the export came out with bars:

[Jeff Pulera]

Assuming you are getting a proper widescreen clip exported without black bars, if you are trying to place that new clip into the old anamorphic DV sequence, that might explain why it doesn’t look right.

Try this – import the exported clip into Premiere, then right-click and select New Sequence from Clip. How does it look now? Post screen grab of Sequence > Sequence Settings please. And make sure Program window is set to FIT so that nothing funny is happening on that end.

What export settings did you use, the 720p or what?

Thanks

Jeff

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

And what does the image of smoking woman represent, what stage of workflow are we looking at because no black bars on that, where did that grab come from?

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Robert Gilbert]

BTW there’s nothing anamorphic here. The camera created this monster because I was told to shoot in Letterbox mode, which creates a fake widescreen in the 4/3 camera lens.

I re-imported the original SD footage and I did the “new sequence from clip” at FIT (all new to me) and there are no black bars on the monitor. I was going to export it now but I think I need to change the dimensions in the encoder, because it says 720 x 576 which would be the overall 4/3 dimensions which would never come out as 16/9. What dimensions should I type in?

These are the settings generated by my clicking “new sequence from clip”:

As for my export settings I’ve tried just about every combination I could think of!

[Robert Gilbert]

Yeah, I noticed the black bars disappeared when I uploaded that smoking woman photo to the Cow. What might that imply? I think I snapped that shot of her from a test clip on VLC.
Also: one of my test clips, at first played without bars on vlc, but when I enlarged the vlc screen the bars appeared.

[Jeff Pulera]

Let’s back up and recalibrate, and review what we’ve discussed so far. I might need to make clearer the pixel aspect ratio business.

DV video (NTSC) is 720×480, regardless of whether shot as 4:3 or 16:9, and one might say “How can that be?” (and in your case for PAL, it is 720×576). The widescreen version simply uses pixels that are defined as wider (rectangular) so even though the dimensions are the same between the 4:3 and 16:9 recording, the pixel shape changes the output. So widescreen video derived from just changing the pixel aspect and not the dimensions is “anamorphic” widescreen, or basically “fake” widescreen.

Please see this blog I wrote a million years ago – https://blog.sharbor.com/blog/2010/07/anamorphic-widescreen-understanding-pixel-aspect-ratios-3/

The reason I had previously suggested NOT using the anamorphic export settings is because different players will interpret the footage in different ways and may not correctly display your clip since PAR is maybe not considered. Therefore you want to export a 16:9 image using square pixels, with an actual 16:9 ratio between width and height.

Like 1920×1080 or 1280×720 for HD or in the case of SD PAL then 1024×576. You said the latter did not work for you, but I wonder if some other factor is messing things up, like the player or whatever? With NTSC, I have exported SD widescreen as 864×480 with 1.0 PAR to get widescreen playback and works great, not sure why the PAL version of 1024×576 would not provide equally good results for you to create a true 16:9 widescreen file for playback? Maybe you are misinterpreting what you are seeing in the player, with player just adding a border for some reason?

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Re-reading your original post, you wanted help in re-exporting the 1344×1080 clip. Just want to make sure you know that all of my suggestions are based on using the original 720×576 source clip and that the 1344×1080 clip should be discarded, that one is a mess and I hope is not still being used for any of this process as that would cause issues.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Robert Gilbert]

Thank you for helping me, Jeff. Maybe I should say more about this project. I shot this film years ago. I think I can safely say that the black bars don’t depend on the playback.

I recall struggling with importing the raw footage. I had to capture it in Final Cut, then bring it into Premiere. I think I had to conform it to square pixels (if i remember correctly). At the present, I have reopened the old project and imported the upscaled version of the finished film for the sole purpose of adding subtitles to the upscaled version. I’m doing this in order to be able to enter festivals and to have a nicer HD version on the web. I can replace the upscaled version with the SD version in the timeline, as you said I should and work with that.

Please note that Ann Bens said that even if I succeed in removing the black bars, YouTube will put them back anyway and the film festival projection will do the same. That would mean I’m wasting my time, but I assume that would only be the case if the finished cropped aspect ratio was not 16/9. Can I really crop it to a perfect 16/9? If Ann is right then I’m wasting my time. Please advise me on that!

BTW I’ve been using the word footage to mean the two versions of the finished film. I don’t have the raw footage with me.

[Jeff Pulera]

I pulled your lady pic into Photoshop and it comes up as 1050×576, which is close to the 1024×576 I had suggested for a widescreen image. I’m confused about comments of YouTube adding black bars – if the content you upload is HD widescreen, no bars are getting added to anything. But that is dependent on the upload being an acceptable video format sizing and not some odd dimensions.

This would be infinitely easier to resolve if I could see or have a sample of the footage you are working with, since it is apparently not the original DV footage. Can you possibly put a short sample of a few seconds into DropBox or similar so that I (and/or others) could actually run it through Premiere and refine the proper workflow to get the desired results?

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Let’s make this really easy. Import the footage you have into Premiere, is that the 1344×1080 upscale version?

Right-click and New Sequence from Clip. Put the playhead on a desired frame in timeline, and then export a still image using the camera icon. This will save a still from the timeline in the exact resolution of what’s there (black bars and all, if those bars are part of the actual video source clip). So I don’t need VIDEO to work with, a proper STILL will do. But then also provide a screen shot of the Sequence Settings from that same setup. That will verify resolution, frame rate, pixel aspect that is being worked with so I can duplicate here. Having that information, and the still image, is all I should need to get this fixed finally.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers