Exporting Letterbox without Bars

[Robert Gilbert]

It worked!

Dear Jeff,

Thank you so much for all your help!

It was my oversight. I was using only VLC to check the output. VLC wasn’t automatically sizing it’s screen to hug my widescreen movie, so it naturally produced black bars to fill in the oversized (4:3?) screen (even though I had tried the various aspect ratio options). I only realized this when I tried to play my clip on QuickTime, which did adjust it’s screen to hug the widescreen video!

I did a test upload to YouTube and found only a hairline of black at the bottom. Could you please suggest the best method of removing that line?

And could you please suggest the best settings for a version that I can upload directly to Film Freeway?

[Jeff Pulera]

So glad you finally have success! Regarding VLC, I had mentioned to check exports back in Premiere, that is the only way to truly know what you have.

If after exporting using Scale to Fill, you still have any black (I think I saw the same hairline) try using Motion Effect to manually scale image up a few percent in timeline before exporting.

Found this at Film Freeway:

FilmFreeway accepts all major video formats in full quality HD up to 10 GB. We transcode videos for playback compatibility and performance and recommend that you use settings close to our output settings:

Maximum video bitrate: 2200 Kbps, H.264, mp4
Audio: 128 Kbps, AAC, 2 channel stereo
Aspect ratio preserved; maximum video height of 720 pixels

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Robert Gilbert]

Dear Jeff,
I wanted to check everything well before closing the thread. It all looks good! I should have asked your advice years ago! May God bless you and make you happy here and hereafter! Thanks so much.

Robert

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Robert,

Glad I could help, sorry we could not resolve this more quickly, that was a lot of posts ????

Thanks

Jeff

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Robert Gilbert]

I’m glad I was able to upscale to 720p for YouTube, but it looks like any important film festival will not accept 720p. And even if they did accept it, their projector would upscale it further and I don’t think my footage would be able to stand that.
I heard there are ways to upscale SD to 1080p but I don’t know what chances there are of it coming out good. I’d like to find a way, but I can’t spend days and nights on endless trial and error tweaking. Please advise me if you know of a good solution. Thanks.

[Jeff Pulera]

Recent versions of After Effects offer “detail-preserving upscale”, but I have not tried it. I guess that would be the first place to start, which should provide better results than basic upscaling in Premiere.

If using the PC, there is a very complicated method of upscaling footage using a collection of free software apps and plugins, and it does require scripting as there is no GUI to work with. I put in the time and effort to get all that stuff installed and working and figured out the workflow and am getting beautiful results converting DV (NTSC) to 720p and 1080p. I was starting with interlaced footage, which this process converts to 60p. I imagine it would work as well for your 25p source material, with the right settings in the script.

If you’re very adventurous and don’t mind spending an entire day or more installing stuff and experimenting, I can try to share the workflow components, but this process is not for the faint of heart. I’d try AE first!

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

A few example workflows –

https://www.gyroshot.com/simpleslug.htm

(I used the following information for my workflow) –
https://macilatthefront.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-odyssey-of-trying-to-upscale.html
https://macilatthefront.blogspot.com/2018/09/tutorial-4-sd-to-hd-revisited.html

Or use the AE method:

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/detail-preserving-upscale-effect.html

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

One more thing, you have an advantage over my workflow since my DV footage is 4:3 interlaced, so first there is the deinterlacing to deal with, then secondly if I want to not have pillar-boxed footage, I need to CROP my video to fit 16:9 therefore losing precious resolution. As you have a 16:9 Progressive source, this should make it easier to get 1080p out of it.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Robert Gilbert]

Thank you very much, Jeff. Would you know of anyone who could give me a good indie price (actually, an “India price” might be better!) to do that complicated upscale?
My film is 38 minutes long. It’s a non profit drama about a girl in post abortion crisis. Thanks.

[Jeff Pulera]

I would be willing to attempt a non-profit upscale, if you can get me the edited movie in DV .avi format via DropBox or similar service that handles large files. I already have all the required bits and pieces on my computer to do it. One hour of DV is about 13GB so 38 minutes might be like 8 or 9 GB perhaps? Actually, would be very wise to try a SHORT sample first that I would convert and send back to you for review. Like just a minute or two of DV source. Should use DV since converting to .mp4 would be lossy.

You can reach me inserting my name at gmail

Thanks

jeffpulera