Sequence Exporting in Widescreen

[Drew Keo]

Quick update – My export settings are Quicktime movie and NTSCDV, I went back to play around with those settings and changed it to NTSCDV Widescreen. That took care of the letter box on top and bottom, but now there are black bars on the left and right of the image. Any ideas? Thanks

[Vince Becquiot]

Hi Andrew,

Forget presets and scroll down to advanced video settings. Change your resolution to 1280 x 720, square pixels (1.0). That should be it.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Andrew,

Please tell us what your end goal is – are you trying to create a clip for the web, DVD, archiving, or what?

Your source video is 720p HD, but the NTSC format is standard definition. NTSC is 720×480 whether 4:3 or 16:9 – the number of pixels are the same, but the pixel aspect ratio (shape) changes between 4:3 and 16:9 NTSC.

If you are trying to create an SD clip for playback on a computer or website, square pixels are always assumed by the computer, so you have to change the actual frame dimensions then. I believe the correct number would be 854×480 (with 1.0 pixel aspect) which would then provide proper playback using QuickTime player, iTunes, etc.

Use custom settings to achieve this, as Vince suggested

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor

[Drew Keo]

Hey Vince – How do I scroll down to advance video setting? Is this prior to starting a project or can I do this in the export window? I’m sorry but I’m not seeing it. Thanks

[Drew Keo]

Hi Jeff – The end goal is to have these videos on the web. The only reason I chose an NTSC preset in Export Settings was because the only options under the Quicktime Format were NTSC and PAL. I don’t care if it is SD or HD, I just don’t want to lose any of the original frame.

So now in the export settings I’m choosing quicktime format and custom setting. I scroll down to basic settings and when I attempt to change it to 1280×720 (as Vince said to do) it wont allow me to. If I put 1280 then the height automatically goes to 853. No matter what I change it to, the black bars still show up in the output.

Any ideas?

[Jeff Pulera]

I just checked in CS5 and there is a chain link to the right of the width and height parameters that locks the aspect ratio, click to toggle off/on.

For web display, you may want to choose an H.264 preset rather than QT, and QT players will still play these files, but they may be more compact and higher quality.

Anyway, I chose a 1280×720 preset to match your footage, but then changed the 720 part to 480 and top number changed to 852, so looks like 852×480 is the proper size to export to an “NTSC” size with square (1.0) pixels. Depending on your audience and bandwidth concerns, you might want to go a little smaller yet, up to you.

Sticking with the original HD size of 1280×720 may be more than some viewers machines/connections can handle.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor

[Drew Keo]

Thank you Jeff. I went with the SD and I am happy with the result. Many thanks.