im very confused.

[JimtheJib]

ive been reading and rereading the posts but they just confuse me more. could we have one post with the definitive requirements. it seems there are more than one version of the requirements. (i.e. letterbox vrs anamorphic, etc...)


thanks

[pastywhiteboy]

16x9 and 24p. Those are the 2 requirements. No, letterboxed 4x3 does not mean that it is 16x9 and yes, letterboxing further within a 16x9 file (ie: pushing it to 1.85 or 2.35) is ok as long as your final output file is in fact 16x9 and 24p. That's my understanding anyway. Jarred's original spec post is pretty clear, though.

[pastywhiteboy]

Oh yeah, and the mpeg2 has to be at an average of 8mbits.

[Brandon Rice]

Yep. you got it right! A Progressive(24P) 16:9 MPEG2 file with the audio embedded.

[pastywhiteboy]

And don't forget to add those CGI bubbles!

[JimtheJib]

thanks. when you say anamorphic do you mean it has to be able to swtich between 4:3 and 16:9 depending on what screen your watching it on your i can just crop the footage and expand it?

thanks again

[Brandon Rice]

thanks. when you say anamorphic do you mean it has to be able to swtich between 4:3 and 16:9 depending on what screen your watching it on your i can just crop the footage and expand it?

thanks again

It has to be a 16:9 file, which by definition will (I think) automatically switch, like you said.

[JimtheJib]

ok. im just getting really nervous. i don't wanna screw it up at this point.

[pabloabad]

My DVX is the PAL version and it shoots 25p instead of 24p. It will take some hours tonight downconverting. Is this requirement very fix? It's not very fair with DVXusers in PAL countries, our work will have a lose in motion quality.
Pablo

[Slice]

Glad I allways shoot 16:9.

[pastywhiteboy]

My DVX is the PAL version and it shoots 25p instead of 24p. It will take some hours tonight downconverting. Is this requirement very fix? It's not very fair with DVXusers in PAL countries, our work will have a lose in motion quality.
Pablo

Just slow your entire project down 4%... makes the output to 24p relatively painless. Shouldn't take much time to do that.

-pastywhiteboy

[Brandon Rice]

Even if you shoot 16:9, you still have to make it anamorphic.

[Slice]

I did, but thanks for the heads up anyway.

[Brandon Rice]

Cool, you're good to go!

[pabloabad]

Thank you, pastywhiteboy, but I think I've just found a way to do it without losing frames.
I export the entire project in FCP to image sequence (Targa, 25 fps) , the I open in Quicktime at 24fps. Now I have to deal with the audio... I'm freaking! ;)
Pablo

[BrianV]

I believe I'm set, but what's nagging MY mind is that I'm used to opening up anamorphic movies in QuickTime and having it showed up squeezed... but after the muxing process (and/or even the initial MPEG-2 compression) it loads up properly displayed (as a widescreen image).

Did the whole process again to ensure I didn't frag something up, and when I import into DVD Studio Pro it does what it needs to do, sooooo...

....I'm suuuure it'll be fine. Hehe... heh... he.. hehehe... *gulp*

[Brandon Rice]

I believe I'm set, but what's nagging MY mind is that I'm used to opening up anamorphic movies in QuickTime and having it showed up squeezed... but after the muxing process (and/or even the initial MPEG-2 compression) it loads up properly displayed (as a widescreen image).

Did the whole process again to ensure I didn't frag something up, and when I import into DVD Studio Pro it does what it needs to do, sooooo...

....I'm suuuure it'll be fine. Hehe... heh... he.. hehehe... *gulp*

Just burn a DVD and watch it on a TV. That would be a good test.

[pabloabad]

I'm ready to submit, but I've got a last problem. When downconverting from 25p (DVX100e) to 24p, the video is ok, but in the audio I have a 'pop' every 24 frames. How can I fix it? Please! Thanks everybody
Pablo

[Ralph Oshiro]

No, letterboxed 4x3 does not mean that it is 16x9.Yeah, I realize that. So . . . what do I do? (in Premiere Pro 1.5) I shot on a non-A DVX100 4:3 and just plain letterboxed with no squeeze or anything. The 4:3 frame is simply cropped with top and bottom bars. So the pixel aspect ratio should still be 0.9 DV, correct? So what do I do? I mean EXACTLY, what do I do in Premiere Pro 1.5?

[GenJerDan]

Until you get a real answer, and bearing in mind I don't know anything about Premiere... If you set the project properties to be widescreen, it *should* automatically yank off the letterbox bars and fill the screen with the real image.

IF Premiere was written sensibly (like Vegas).

[Beat Takeshi]

i tested mine after i uploaded figuring i was the man and did it right... of course it didnt letter box like it should have. Im going to have to upload a new version tonight.

[JimtheJib]

i have a huge problem....when i export in FCP there are black flash frames between each cut. could it be because i captured it accidentally at 30 fps? any suggestions?

[Ralph Oshiro]

Well I encoded from Premiere Pro using the "NTSC Progressive 4x3 7MB CBR High Quality 1-pass" preset. There ARE no high quality 16:9 presets.

[Ralph Oshiro]

Well I encoded from Premiere Pro using the "NTSC Progressive 4x3 7MB CBR High Quality 1-pass" preset. There ARE no high quality 16:9 presets.Well, I "exported to DVD" since no other option allowed me to make a high quality MPG file. The DVD-R plays fine on a TV, 4:3 with black bars on top and bottom. But when I explore the directory of the DVD (not a data DVD), I can only see a 225MB ".VOB" file. NOW WHAT? Since I only own Adobe Premiere Pro, I do NOT seem to have any way to encode a plain vanilla .MPG file. What do I do?

[GenJerDan]

Try renaming the file to .mpg See if it will play in a media player (whatever you'd usually play MPEGs in) like that. Hopefully, it will. And if the sound has not been AC-3 encoded, it should be there, too.

[JimtheJib]

wait so is letter box accepted or not? (sorry for this one, isaw the other threads but need a definitive answer)

[Ralph Oshiro]

wait so is letter box accepted or not? (sorry for this one, isaw the other threads but need a definitive answer)You're supposed to submit a 16:9 file. What I'm not clear on is for those of us who have shot simple, unsqueezed 4:3 with a letterbox matte, the pixel aspect ratio is standard DV 0.9. I don't know if we're supposed to "zoom" our matted 4:3 footage and magify it to fill a 16:9 raster or not. I don't know what pixel aspect ratio we're supposed to use if we are in fact expected to do that. I don't know how to do this because I NEVER zoom my 4:3 letterboxed footage up to fill a 16:9 raster. And Premiere Pro is very limited in this area. Why is no one answering this question?

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

NBC, r u on FCP?

[EditPhish]

Barry confirmed in another thread to me that those of us who shot letterbox should submit 16:9 Anamorphic - meaning yes, you have to stretch it.

There's a cool free program I found (that I dug and dug for) called Meta Streamclip -- http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html -- that you can do this with. If you have Final Cut Pro, Compressor will do it also. You essentially have to crop the black bars out and resize the video to 720x480.

I uploaded 150 megs worth of footage to a friend of mine out of state with FCP and we compared results. At least from our limited test, Meta Streamclip did a better job -- though I'll say my friend admits he's no Compressor expert.

You could also do it in your NLE by opening a new sequence (or timeline) and bringing your whole movie into a 16:9 Anamorphic project... then crop out the black bars and resize the whole thing up by about 133%. I did this in Final Cut Express myself, but there was more quality loss than with Meta Streamclip.

Good luck! If you need any tips with the Meta Streamclip program feel free to ask... I only started learning it yesterday (LOL) -- but it's very user friendly. You'll basically bring in your uncompressed movie, select the second 720x480 option (the one that doesn't say "unscaled"), check off the box for better resizing, 100% quality, and crop top by 54 and bottom by 54. It'll all make more sense when you see the options in front of you... just be sure to select the right codec and options for that codec.

[Ralph Oshiro]

I only own ADOBE PREMIERE PRO 1.5 on a WINDOWS XP PC. So we are CONVERTING our native 0.9 standard DV pixel aspect ratio to 1.2? Is that correct?

[Ralph Oshiro]

For zombiefest, I sent in a 4:3 letterboxed (no squeeze) with a standard DV pixel aspect ratio of 0.9 and it played correctly both on DVXUSER's web download and on the replicated DVD. Did Jarred manipulate my .AVI file somehow for zombiefest, or was the file just fine as was submitted, with a 0.9 pixel aspect ratio and the black bars at the top and bopttom of the essentially standard 4:3 frame? Should I just do the same thing on this contest?

[EditPhish]

I only own ADOBE PREMIERE PRO 1.5 on a WINDOWS XP PC. So we are CONVERTING our native 0.9 standard DV pixel aspect ratio to 1.2? Is that correct?

Dude, I totally feel your pain and am trying to help ya out. I don't do editing on a PC, so bare with me.

Can you export out as an AVI?
Can you bring that AVI back into Premiere -- set your project at 16:9 anamorphic -- and bring the AVI clip into the timeline.
It should look like your footage is letterboxed and also pillar boxed (from the side).

Now scale it up about 133% (until the video, minus black bars all around, fills the screen) and render.

That's how I similarly accomplished it in Final Cut Express. The results weren't GREAT... there might be a free windows app out there that does similar to MPEG Streamclip that does a better job, but I don't know.

[EditPhish]

Maybe this helps? :

http://www.videoforums.co.uk/reviews/features/p2_articleid/75

http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html

[Ralph Oshiro]

Oh, duh. I finally figured out how to encode right from Adobe Premiere Pro to a high bitrate MPEG file (it was hidden in a drop-down menu). BUT, I'm still confused about zooming my video to 16:9.

[Ralph Oshiro]

Can you export out as an AVI?
Can you bring that AVI back into Premiere -- set your project at 16:9 anamorphic -- and bring the AVI clip into the timeline.
It should look like your footage is letterboxed and also pillar boxed (from the side).

Now scale it up about 133% (until the video, minus black bars all around, fills the screen) and render.Thanks, I appreciate your effort. I tried that. But something wasn't right and I had no idea what was wrong. I don't know how you get 0.9 pixels to look right in a 1.2 pixel aspect ratio format (16:9). I guess the 133% zoom would cure that. I'll try it again after my encode on the 4:3 file finishes. Thanks again!

[GenJerDan]

I don't know how you get 0.9 pixels to look right in a 1.2 pixel aspect ratio format (16:9).

The letterboxed 4:3 (minus the bars) is 16:9

The pixel aspect ratio doesn't really matter (bad way of putting it). Think of it this way: when you save out a still image to the computer, it changes the PAR (or, at least, the "shape" of the pixels) and still looks right.

Saving out a de-letterboxed image as anamorphic just tells the computer to adjust the ratio so that the (now) 16:9 fits into a 720x480 box. When it's played back, the player unsqueezes it back to what it was.

[Ralph Oshiro]

I know you're only trying to help, but . . .


The pixel aspect ratio doesn't really matter (bad way of putting it). Think of it this way: when you save out a still image to the computer, it changes the PAR (or, at least, the "shape" of the pixels) and still looks right.Not if you don't tell Photoshop to change the pixel aspect ratio.


Saving out a de-letterboxed image as anamorphic just tells the computer to adjust the ratio so that the (now) 16:9 fits into a 720x480 box. When it's played back, the player unsqueezes it back to what it was.Yeah, if Adobe Premiere "knows" how to do this correctly. And if I "know" how to rescale the image by 133%. How do you do that in Premiere Pro? Using camera zoom trial by error (they use an arbitrary scale, not percentage)? Maybe I'm just too stupid to do this.

[Ralph Oshiro]

Dude, I totally feel your pain and am trying to help ya out. I don't do editing on a PC, so bare with me.

Can you export out as an AVI?
Can you bring that AVI back into Premiere -- set your project at 16:9 anamorphic -- and bring the AVI clip into the timeline.
It should look like your footage is letterboxed and also pillar boxed (from the side).

Now scale it up about 133% (until the video, minus black bars all around, fills the screen) and render.

That's how I similarly accomplished it in Final Cut Express. The results weren't GREAT... there might be a free windows app out there that does similar to MPEG Streamclip that does a better job, but I don't know.Okay, I did exactly as you said (but in Premiere Pro 1.5).

1. Exported as a 0.9 DV 4:3 AVI.
2. Created a new widescreen 24PA project in Premiere.
3. Placed the AVI in the timeline.
4. This resulted in a timeline image that has black bars at top, bottom and sides.
5. But since the SOURCE pixel aspect ratio is STILL 0.9, and I'm now in a 1.2 pixel aspect ratio timeline, the images looks SQUEEZED.

So, do I need to EXPORT the AVI as a widescreen file? How do I UNSQUEEZE?

////////////////////////EDIT///////////////////////////////

OHHHHH. I think I get it now. It's NOT squeezed in my Premiere preview window. It IS squeezed on my 4:3 TV. But it looks UNSQUEEZED when I put my 4:3 TV in 16:9 mode! Now, I just have to figure out how to zoom exactly 133% in Premiere.

[Ralph Oshiro]

Okay, NOW here;s the problem . . .

Can't "zoom" 133% in Premiere. I can "zoom" in Transform/Camera View/Zoom by changing the default value of '10' to a number less than ten, but the vertical columns still crop the sides of the image. MAYBE PREMIERE CAN'T DO THIS!

[Ralph Oshiro]

I figured it out . . .

VIDEO EFFECTS/Distort/Transform/Scale Height = 133; Scale Width = 133

Done.

[Brandon Rice]

Whooh!!! Nice job!

[Beat Takeshi]

Hey NBC, did you shoot 4x3? Im just asking because I shot squeezed and captured into a 16x9 project which looks fine in the premiere window. Then I outputed to a 16x9 uncompressed avi which looks fine and has the coorect 16x9 look. Then I created my mpeg that looks fine. When I created a DVD to check on a TV it crops the picture instead of resizing and putting in the black bars. I think the word anamorphic is meaning a tag that will tell the tv to letter box if it sees a 16x9 video source but my video has seemed to have lost its tags somewhere. Anyone have any ideas on how to get this back?

[Brandon Rice]

Hey NBC, did you shoot 4x3? Im just asking because I shot squeezed and captured into a 16x9 project which looks fine in the premiere window. Then I outputed to a 16x9 uncompressed avi which looks fine and has the coorect 16x9 look. Then I created my mpeg that looks fine. When I created a DVD to check on a TV it crops the picture instead of resizing and putting in the black bars. I think the word anamorphic is meaning a tag that will tell the tv to letter box if it sees a 16x9 video source but my video has seemed to have lost its tags somewhere. Anyone have any ideas on how to get this back?

Do you have a program that will tag it for you? I created my file in Sorenson Squeeze, and it automatically tags the file.

[arielman]

I fimed in squeeze as well edited in 16.9 and output to a DVD . It looked great on my LCD widescreen BUT blew out on my old 27' t.v . I changed the DVD settings to LB ( letterbox ) and it played perfect , no cropping ) .

As for the tag ...HHMM not sure if Studio 10 even does this for sure , I don't think it does as I said above it blew out . by right it should detect it ( 16.9) and play as such.without changing the DVD settings.. I'll have to ask them .
Ian

[Beat Takeshi]

I am using Canopus Pro coder. I guess I can try sorenson or just read the procoders manual :)
do you mean settings on the DVD player? I looked on the remote for a setting but couldnt find it. I will have to look on the player here. It looks fine on the plasma screen. I will crack open the manual and take a look and see if I can figure this out.

[Beat Takeshi]

hmmm the manual says it has settings for anamorphic pixel settings but i have yet to find it....

[EditPhish]

If you're having a problem with the 16:9/4:3 letterbox tagging check out this script (Mac users)

http://homepage.mac.com/sith33/FileSharing34.html

It's supposed to correct the issue for iDVD, but maybe it will help with others DVD authoring tools.

[Ralph Oshiro]

Hey NBC, did you shoot 4x3?I shot 4:3 UNSQUEEZED letterbox. It does sound as if your file has the 16:9 "flag" set to off, but I barely was able to figure out my problem. Sorry, but I don't know enough to help!