Question About Cropping in Permier Pro 2.0

B

BrettHickman

Member
Moderators, this is similar to another posting I made under the DVX100 forum under "uprezzing 4:3 techinique". Feel free to delete my OP if neccessary. Thank you for your understanding--I felt the question better suited for this forum.


Assuming the film is shot (progressive) in 4x3
I am still confused on how to crop in premier pro and export as tiff; here's why:

1. File --> Export --> Movie. There I have the Tiff Option, but no option in that dialogue to edit the dimensions or to crop.

So next I tried

2, File --> Export -->Adobe Media Encoder. Here I see no option for Tiff output so this can't be right.

Finally.. Do I just use the "Crop" tool under the effecets pallet in Premier Pro? If so, I only see %, and not pixels. What percent do I crop it to 10.x%?

Thanks for your help and clarification.. I am all set after this.

-Brett
 
Exporting a tif is usually for a frame grab, not for an export of the finished project. If all you want to do is letter box your 4:3 project for a 16:9 aspect ratio, that is easy.

Assuming that you are in NTSC land, then the PAR (pixel aspect ratio) for a 4:3 project is .9. What you want is a 1.2 PAR matte. This can be something as simple as a .psd file with opaque black bars at the top and bottom placed on a higher layer in the timeline.

For this you would make a frame with the bars set as follows:

480 pixels / ((16/9) / (4/3)) or 480 * 1.33 = 360 pixels

480 - 360 = 120 pixels

120 / 2 = 60 pixels

so you would set your bars at 60 pixels and 420 pixels.

If you want this in percentage then it would be:

60 / 480 = .125 or in percentage 12.5

so it would they would be at 12.5% and 87.5%
 
The reason I want to export a tiff sequence of images is to uprezz it in a program such as "Photozoom Pro". The footage was already shot in 4;3 with letterbox. I was hoping to crop out the letter box mask (and a bit more to make it exactly accurrate--I believe someone said 720x360?).

Thanks for your prompt reply! Also, can't wait to see Violet!!

Edit-- I should clarify my intentions more. After cropping it then uprezzing, I planned to import it into a 16:9 project template to render it out as a widescreen film. Is that clear or am I really confusing hahah? Thanks for your help and patience, newbie here btw.
 
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If you do go this route, then you might as well correct the PAR at the same time. For your "uprez" what frame size are you intending to output? You say that you want to "...render it out as a widescreen film" do you mean film out or do you mean as an anamorphic DVD?

Still a bit confused so give us a bit more detail as to exactly how you want to use the footage.

"Violet" is coming along nicely, we will be starting our second production block this coming weekend. Its a big project but its been fun working with really great talent.
 
I'm not sure what par is.. But I know I will no be going out to film but to DVD so I assume anamorphic DVD because Itd like the 16:9 ratio. I want to use it to display on a high def television at a wedding reception. The television is wide screen, but the dvd is likely to be played on standard 4:3 televisions too.

Thanks so much for your help! I really appreciate it.. And fantastic poster by the way.
 
PAR is an acronym for Pixel Aspect Ratio. In NTSC land, there are two that are applicable to your application. One is .9 the other is 1.2. The ratio of the two are 1.33 to 1. This is the difference between a 4:3 and a 16:9 frame size.

Let me see if I understand what you are attempting to accomplish. You shot some material in 4:3 and you want to crop it in post to a letter-boxed 16:9 shape for release on a DVD. Is this correct?
 
khmuse said:
PAR is an acronym for Pixel Aspect Ratio. In NTSC land, there are two that are applicable to your application. One is .9 the other is 1.2. The ratio of the two are 1.33 to 1. This is the difference between a 4:3 and a 16:9 frame size.

Let me see if I understand what you are attempting to accomplish. You shot some material in 4:3 and you want to crop it in post to a letter-boxed 16:9 shape for release on a DVD. Is this correct?
Click to expand...

yes, I wish to crop it in post, export it to uprez it, then release it to dvd in a 16:9 dimension to play on widescreen (if need be) and 4:3 screen with letterboxes if need be.

Thanks!
Brett
 
A DVD which is anamorphic will automatically play as letterboxed in a player that is setup for a 4:3 screen so this should work fine. Just be certain that when you do the "uprez" you set your frame size to 720 x 480 with a PAR of 1.2. Then when you MPEG encode it for the DVD it will be correct for both a widescreen and 4:3 display.

Still not certain why you are doing this externally since it is still going to be SD footage, but it should work just fine regardless.
 
khmuse said:
A DVD which is anamorphic will automatically play as letterboxed in a player that is setup for a 4:3 screen so this should work fine. Just be certain that when you do the "uprez" you set your frame size to 720 x 480 with a PAR of 1.2. Then when you MPEG encode it for the DVD it will be correct for both a widescreen and 4:3 display.

Still not certain why you are doing this externally since it is still going to be SD footage, but it should work just fine regardless.
Click to expand...

Well, I am going wide screen but shot in 4:3 because I feel the quality of the image is better in 4:3 then squeeze mode. I am going external to us the photozoom Pro to uprez. Finally, I don't think we got around to how to properly crop it?

Unless you have a plain and simple suggestion on what I should do: in terms of properly taking letterboxed footage and turning it into an anamorphic dvd so that the letter box doesn't show in widescreen.

Again.. I am a total noob here, but I've been learning a ton fast, thanks to experts like you on these forums... Again, thanks for your patience, it's almost all clear
 
I don't agree at all about shooting 4:3 and then "uprez" in an external program having better quality than squeeze, but that is a different issue now that it is already shot.

I would personally do all this in Premiere and avoid all the extra compression of going to an external application and back.

Just use the crop effect selecting 12.5% for the top and bottom and select the "Zoom" option. You will now have a cropped image with a PAR of 1.2

Save this out as an uncompressed .avi and import it back into a new "wide-screen" project. Conform the just save file to a PAR of 1.2 and you are done.
 
Fantastic! That's what Ill do for furture shooting. Ill shoot in 4:3 without letterbox and use gaffer/camera tape to mark where the box would be. Then ill crop and export to import as a widescreen project. I feel this ought to give me the best picture if I am going for the "widescreen" look over the squeeze.

Thanks for all of your help! i appreciate it!
Brett
 
When I "Save this out as an uncompressed .avi and import it back into a new "wide-screen" project." Because of my cropping, I just generated a par or 1.2. however, under the export settings under uncompressed avi, do I also select a par of 1.2 there are leave it as the 4;3 par of .9? I left it at .9 to try first and imported the new file into a 16;9 widescreen project and got black bars on left and right and a streched image. I will try exporting the 1.2 par with the 1.2 par selected from the drop down menu and try again.

thanks!
Brett
 
Brett,

yeh, export as 1.2 PAR. If it doesn't show up right when importing into a 16:9 project after that, you can right-click on the clip in the Project window and do Interpret Footage to tell it to use 1.2.

Much better to shoot regular 4:3 with NO letterboxing. Then, if need be you can tweak your shots up and down to reframe them if it wasn't perfect on the shoot. Very flexible.

Josh
 
Gosh, I'd like to get back on here an my next post be "It worked fantastically", and leave you guys alone :-(. Here's the exact steps I took and the end result was footage on a 16:9 timeline with black bars on the left and right.

1. Capture the 4:3 unletterboxed test footage into a 4:3 project template in PP2.

2. Dropped the "Crop" effect onto the footage on the timeline. Cropped exactly 12.5% from both top, and 12.5% from the bottom.

3. Selected the "Zoom" radio box and the picture was enlarged and distorted (Normal, I know because the par of 1.2 is being displayed at 4:3).

4. Exported an uncompressed .AVI with the PAR at 1.2 as well. Hit Export.

5. Created a new project from a 16:9 template (24p) in PP2. Imported my cropped footage.

6. Right clicked on the footage in my project window and hit interpret footage. made sure it was set to 1.2par and framerate the same(irrelevant).

7. Nothing happened. Dropped it on my timeline and rendered it, still black bars on left and right.

Thanks again for all your help (both of you) and your willingness to share your expertise!

Brett
 
Hello Brett,

I am not in front of a computer with PPro right now, but these steps all sound correct. As soon as I am, I will run a test and see where your flow went wrong. Should be able to have an answer within the hour.
 
khmuse said:
Hello Brett,

I am not in front of a computer with PPro right now, but these steps all sound correct. As soon as I am, I will run a test and see where your flow went wrong. Should be able to have an answer within the hour.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much! I swear I've never rendered myself so technicially incompetent in my life. Normally these things come very easy :( :dankk2:
 
OK, there is a faster way to do this and its really straight forward.

1) start a new widescreen project
2) import your 4:3 footage and place it in the timeline
3) use the Video Effects -> Distort -> Transform option and scale the width and height by 133.3%

You can now save your project out as either an uncompressed .avi or use the Adobe Media Encoder to generate your .m2v files.
 
khmuse said:
OK, there is a faster way to do this and its really straight forward.

1) start a new widescreen project
2) import your 4:3 footage and place it in the timeline
3) use the Video Effects -> Distort -> Transform option and scale the width and height by 133.3%

You can now save your project out as either an uncompressed .avi or use the Adobe Media Encoder to generate your .m2v files.
Click to expand...

Okay.. I tried you previous method just as I had before, but this time it worked. Don't know why it didn't before, but the error was obviously with me!

Thank you guys so much for your time and such with the one question.. Hopefully this can serve as an easy and straight forward guide to any other newbies out there trying to achieve the same effect.

Thanks again! And good luck with Violet, can't wait to see the first footage released for it!

Brett
 
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