[Jeff Pulera]

As other poster suggested, figure out what the deliverable needs to be – for instance 1080p or 720p?

The majority of the clips are 1080p, so in that case only the one clip would get “blown up” in a 1080p sequence, and maybe looks pretty good, try it and see. If you edit as 720p, then that one 1280×960 clip will retain its quality, at the expense of lowering the quality of the 1080p clips. Don’t get me wrong, they will look like good 720p clips, but they won’t be 1080p anymore – your deliverable is a lower resolution now.

Frame rate is another consideration – the 48p clip is the oddball, as that is not a delivery frame rate, but rather is used to get better slow motion, for instance putting the 48p clip into a 24p sequence and get smooth 50% slow motion.

Do you need to deliver as 60p, or will the common 30p be fine? If the latter, 60p clips work perfectly in a 30p sequence. Personally, I would be editing in a 1080p30 sequence, and export/deliver as 1080p30. Just the one clip will be blown up and may suffer some quality loss, maybe not that noticeable. And not sure how 48p converts to 30p, might see a strange cadence to the frames, due to 48 to 30 frames per second playback conversion, odd frames being dropped.

Example – New Sequence > AVCHD > 1080p > 1080p30

Thanks

[Jeff Pulera]

I re-read the original post and realized you actually desire the video to have black surroundings, while usually the request is how to remove the black surroundings. My apologies.

Personally, I’d not be able to watch a video that way….I still like the idea of upscaling DVD player which should not stretch the image. To each his own I guess 😉

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

The “p” in 720p stands for Progressive – there is no interlaced version. For HD, only 1080i provides an Interlaced format, but it uses Upper Field First and I believe your DV source may be Lower Field First, which can cause image quality problems.

I stand by my earlier post, encode to best quality you can as SD video and let the DVD or Blu-ray player take care of the rest, I don’t believe in trying to upscale SD footage just for the sake of upscaling, unless one is working on an HD project and must incorporate portions of SD legacy footage into it.

Thanks

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Markus,

Can we please see a screen grab of the Export Settings from Premiere to check encoding settings? Also, do you have another Blu-ray player to test with, maybe a Sony PS3 or PS4, or a computer software player? Just to rule out your player, as it could potentially have compatibility issues with BD-R media.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Blu-ray players, and many newer DVD players, will have hardware upscaling built into the unit, along with HDMI output, so that when you play a DVD, it will be converted and output as HD to the TV display.

In my experience, the benefits of this are two-fold: first, the quality is superior to software upscale to HD using NLE, and second, you don’t have to go through all the extra work of creating a Blu-ray of your SD material.

The player hardware should normally display the image properly – if your 4:3 is being stretched upon playback, check menu settings in both the player and the TV. Do NOT use an older DVD player with analog outputs, that is bad. That will output as SD and then the display simply “blows up” the image to fill the screen and the quality can be very poor.

I can play old DVDs I’d created many years ago on my Blu-ray player out to a 70″ plasma via HDMI and they look fantastic and the image is not stretched or molested in any way. Let the player do the work for you.

Thank you

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Just read OP again, and you say “black all around” so now I wonder what resolution the source might actually be, something smaller than 1080p?? Right-click (or Mac-equivalent) a source clip in Project Bin and hit Properties, please let us know the specs of the source clip (dimensions, frame rate).

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Dave’s observations are spot on, need to fix original sequence before proceeding with any export. 1920×1080 should be 1.0 pixel aspect, for sequence and export.

Regarding the question of how to fit 4:3 footage into a 16:9 sequence/output without black areas, a few options.

[Jeff Pulera]

I would have to to disagree on this one – “60p records at 30 frames per second with two progressive fields per frame.”

It is true that 60i records 30 frames per second, with 2 fields making up each frame (60 fields, or half-frames). Not true for 60p – which is made up of 60 progressive frames. Each frame is complete on its own. Therefore, when put into a 30p timeline at normal playback speed, only every other frame is displayed the same as if the video was recorded at 30p. One second of 60p plays for one second in a 30p timeline, with half the frames being disregarded.

A benefit of 60p in a 30p timeline is smooth slow-motion at 50% speed. 30p uses displays 30 frames every second. If the source is 60p, it has 60 frames per second. Played at 50% speed, one second of 60p plays for two seconds in a 30p timeline (at 50%) so there are no duplicate frames, no stuttering/choppy playback. 60p in a 24p timeline at 40% runs for 2.5 seconds, also nice and smooth.

The thing about 24p is that it is used for Hollywood movies because it has that “cinematic” look to it. That looks includes very choppy pans!! Unless you are purposely trying to get the movie look, do not shoot anything at 24p! It requires a whole different way of shooting to avoid issues. Not good at all for anything with fast action/fact camera moves.

If you take 60p or 30p down to 24p, you automatically get choppier motion since there are less individual frames being shown each second, but then you also get the weird cadence (order of frames) since the math doesn’t divide out evenly.

Thanks

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Abdul,

I honestly don’t know what would happen if the PAL/NTSC setting is incorrect during capture – I capture as NTSC and have never tried the PAL option. I would hope that since it is a digital stream that it would come through correctly either way, and that the PAL/NTSC options would only matter if using an analog capture card.

Try this – right click on a clip in your Premiere Project Bin and select Properties – what does it say? If the clip is 720×576 at 25fps, then that is PAL video and you are fine. If it reports 720×480 29.97, that is an issue that needs to be dealt with.

You mentioned that the capture clip will not play on your TV and that is normal – Smart TVs are looking for an .mp4 file usually (H.264) and do not recognize .avi codecs. From Premiere, export using H.264 and an appropriate preset
such as PAL DV and that should work (and will also be a much smaller file than the original capture clip).

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Max Render Quality is helpful when SCALING the output, such as 1080p to 720p, or HD to SD. For 1080 to 1080, turn it off as suggested, just slowing down the export with no benefit.

I agree that the mismatch of frame rates may be taking a very long time to process due to frame rate conversion. Make your sequence 29.97

What is the source of your video clips, some sort of screen capture utility perhaps? Many of those apps are now using Variable Frame Rate, not to be confused with Variable Bit Rate. Premiere does not like Variable Frame Rate at all! Best advice is to convert the footage to standard frame rate (29.97) using HandBrake software before starting any editing if that is indeed the case. Will really improve the workflow.

Using a standard 29.97 source clip and turning off Max Render, your export times should be dramatically faster.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers