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How do I convert wide screen footage to the 4:3
Hey there. I haven’t done event videography for a few years.
A friend of mine asked me to videotape his sister’s wedding. I videotaped it using the Canon GL2 camera. He videotaped it using some consumer Sony camera which captures in the 16:9 format.
Footages from both cameras were digitized.
I have Canopus DVStorm and Premiere 6.5 which are compatible.
I also purchased PPro2, which is not compatible with DVStorm
I also have Canopus Procoder 2 which converts from 1 format to another.
When I imported both my and his digitized footage into Premiere 6.5, and previewed the video on my monitor, my footage appeared fine in a 4:3 format, whereas his footage appeared in the 16:9 format on the 4:3 screen.
I tried converting his footage in Procoder to Canopus AVI1 720×480, and still has the black frame on the top and bottom when previewed on the monitor.
I tried the transform function in Premiere, stretching the height and width to 120%, and this ends up in the footage looking very grainy and blured.
How do I effectively convert his footage to the 4:3 proportion without loss of quality? -
5 Replies
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Well, first, why convert it?
16:9 is here to stay, and as more widescreens roll out at lower cost, it is only a matter of a year or two untill everything becomes 16:9. We now shoot EVERYTHING 16:9 unless a client couldn’t be convinced (Quite rare).
But, it you do insist in using 4:3, you will have to import it in a 4:3 project, then “zoom out” until the top and bottom bars go away. (not in). You can then just center it horizontally if most of the action is in the center. You may have to “Pan and Scan” the footage if something on the sides needs to be seen. That’s done using the position sliders.
Vince
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Thank you, Vince. As I said, I haven’t edited for a while. I don’t quite understand how to technically implement the “zoom out” feature without the loss of quality.
It sounds like this feature was not available in the 6.5 version of Premiere, but is available in PPro2.
If that’s true, could you please explain in a bit more detail how to do it.
Thank you.Daniel.
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Sure, you will find the “scale” slider under Effects Control > Motion. Make sure you start with a standard DV project. Playing with the scale slider, you just want to fill the frame.
By the way, I meant “zooming in”. There will be a slight loss in quality; no way around it.
Again, I would try to convince them to stick with 16:9, they’ll regret the 4:3 decision as soon as they get that widescreen 😉
Vince
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Vincent has some good advice, but since you have a Storm and Premiere 6.5 here is a web site with conversion info and plug-ins that work with Premiere v6.x
https://www.mykaskin.freeserve.co.uk/myksvideopages/plugins.html -
Thank you, everyone, for your help.
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