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Options for Resizing
Hey guys,
I have a ton of 720×480 raw files that are actually 720×400 aspect ratio. In my 720×400 project file if I export them as 720×400 then it just crops off a bunch of pixels, so I have been manually scaling the video down to 720×400 by dragging the box in the Sequence window. If I choose in Effects to Scale then I’m faced with a percentage instead of accurate pixels, which I don’t think is what I’m looking for, but maybe I’m wrong.
I’m just wondering if there’s a better, faster, and more accurate way to do this. It seems like there should be a simple Resize filter that I can just drag onto the clip in the timeline and hit 720×400, but it doesn’t appear to exist. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
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5 Replies
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Hi Al,
I would guess that you’ve not had any replies since the question is not clear. 720×400 is not an “aspect ratio”, it is the dimensions in pixels.
Can you please clarify what kind of files you are working with, and also – what do you want to do for export? DVD, web?
Thanks
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers -
They’re raw VOB files from some promotional DVDs. VOBs are MPEG-2 files with a .VOB extension. All DVDs are encoded at 720×480 and then letterboxed or adjusted to the proper AR by the player. In this case, the VOBs are 16:9 widescreen and should be 720×400, which is standard for filling a TV, much like 1280×720 is standard 720p. I am exporting them as h.264 files for YouTube. Thanks.
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I should add that if I just right click on the clip and choose Scale to Framesize it puts a few pixels of black around the edges. Probably because it’s theoretically more like 720×404 but due to the 16 pixel increment thing of MPEG-1/MPEG-2 the standard is 720×400.
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Thank you for clarifying. Never heard of 720×400 before. The Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) important to understand in this case to get the results you want.
The 720p HD video that you mentioned uses square pixels with a 1.0 PAR. Divide 1280 and 720 each by 80 and you get 16 and 9, so 720p is naturally widescreen 16:9 in appearance.
However, widescreen SD video is “anamorphic”, meaning the appearance of widescreen is created by using non-square pixels.
4:3 DV video has a PAR of 0.9, while DV Widescreen is 1.2 (for NTSC video). Both the 4:3 and 16:9 versions of DVD use the same 720×480 pixels, but with different PARs.
If the video source is truly widescreen (NOT letterboxed) material, then edit in a DV Widescreen sequence in Premiere and the video ought to look correct there.
As you mentioned, the DVD player typically figures out how to send the video to the TV screen so it looks correct, whether 4:3, 16:9 or letterboxed. However, for computer viewing, anamorphic video is a bad idea – media players and web players typically assume SQUARE pixels, so your widescreen video will not display properly on a computer/website unless you convert it to square pixels first.
If you wish to encode for YouTube, in AME choose H.264, and then scroll all the way to the bottom of the Presets list to the YouTube options. You will find “YouTube 480p Widescreen 29.97”. Choose that, and notice that the encoding specs show:
854×480
1.0 Pixel AspectThis creates a video that plays back as 16:9 naturally, without manipulating the shape of the pixels in order to “fake” widescreen.
This workflow will provide the best (correct) results for what you want to do.
Hope this helps
Thanks
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers -
Good information. Thanks Jeff!
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