Cropping hvx720p footage to cinematic aspect ratios?

leokeiangelos

leokeiangelos

New member
Hello,

I am working on figuring out a good method to crop 720p footage shot on my hvx to cinematic aspect ratios in Premiere. Specifically 1.85:1.

Now the method I've been using is create a canvas in Photoshop with resolution of 960x720 (hvx 720p footage resolution), then create a black letterboxing layer with an empty space of the size of 960x512 (1.85:1 aspect ratio) in the center.

I then import this Photoshop file into Premiere and put on the top layer of my timeline. Here's where things get strange and I don't know what's going on. The picture on my preview screen that is cropped does not look like 1.85:1! Somehow the black bars appear larger than they did in Photoshop (even though the aspect ratio interpretation is set to the same: 1.33)!

And then I go to export the footage. I use Adobe Media Encoder and after I crop off the letterboxing I resize the output footage to 960x512, which if the footage is in 1.85:1 would give me a perfect filled screen, right? Well, I get a completely squished footage!

After some experiementing I found that if I resized the output footage to 960x390 (after cropping off the letterboxing), I get a perfectly cropped picture. The only problem is, it's clearly not in 1.85:1 aspect ratio!

What's going on? My head's exploding!!!

(if anyone has a completely different method they use that works, then please let me know! I'm ready to not even bother finding a solution to my method if there's a completely different way)

Thank you.
 
I wouldn't worry about your PAR in photoshop. Just make a 1280x720 canvas and make black bars so your open area is 692px tall then import this into Premiere. Hopefully Premiere is smart enough to figure out what is going on. Then when you output, just output the whole 1280x720 size and leave the black bars in the encode.
 
Thank you for your quick response!

However that doesn't solve the issue since the hvx 720p footage does not have a natural resolution of 1280x720, it has a natural resolution of 960x720.

And also I'd rather not have the black bars in the encode.
 
I understand the HVX resolution. Sorry, but I am not completely familiar with Premiere so this might not work for you.

Does Premiere work like:

1) Your timeline is 960x730 PAR 1.33 for everything on it

2) You timeline is 1280x720 PAR 1:1 and your footage is interpreted as 960x720 and stretched out, but everything else in your timeline (graphics, etc...) is 1280x720

If it's 1, then I cannot help you (and I think it's a stupid way for NLE's to work) but if it's 2 my suggestion should work well. Also, what are you rendering to? If it is for web I can understand not wanting the black bars, but in that case you wouldn't need them in the first place, just crop on export and don't worry about adding black bars that serve no purpose. If you are rendering for DVD, then you NEED the bars there, as you either have to render in 16:9 or 4:3 for it to work in DVD players.
 
I may be missing something here but 720p is basically cinematic aspect (very close to 1.85:1) so I do not actually know what you are doing with all the psd masks and the weird pixel dimensions you are talking about.

anyway... if you want to adjust frame dimensions for whatever reason. Take an exported clip/movie into an After Effects Comp of the dimensions you need. Use Scale/Motion to frame it and then export it to whatever...
 
Ah no, I think I'm starting to figure it out.

The reason why I want to letterbox the picture while editing is so that I can recenter the picture and find the framing I want. This is why I'm adding the photoshop layer.

Then when I export, I crop away the letterboxed part.

I think William_Robinette solved my problem. I made a 1280x720 canvas in Photoshop then put it in Premiere and it's interpreted correctly and fits the screen size perfectly. Thus whatever letterboxing I do in photoshop is interpreted and translated correctly in Premiere.

(Which solved my original issue which was bringing the 960x720 canvas from photoshop into premiere and having it being interpreted incorrectly and changing the sizing of my letterboxing.)

And Shooter, I do realize 16:9 is extremely close to 1.85:1, I just want to get it down perfect! (plus now in the future if I want to crop 2.39:1 I can as well, just letterbox the photoshop canvas to 1280x536)

So thanks everyone!
 
You could have done that in Premiere Titler.

Still sounds a bit weird to me though and I suspect you are losing some image quality in the process due to re scaling and positioning.

Letterboxing is only a look and makes no difference to the actual aspect ratio. You are only creating a mask inside the image format as determined by your export setting. Try the After Effects method (which I use for creating film out puts.)
 
The After Effects Method is the correct way to do it even though you are still rescaling and recomposing your original footage. AEFX is resolution independent.

The way you are doing it is by placing a mask over the footage then chopping off all your image to the mask with a crop effect as you encode and that is losing you quality.

The Titler can make the same mask if thats all you want to do.
Create a title and make a black rectangle (letterbox) at the top and the bottom.
To establish where 1.85 is... use a countdown leader and find the two circles on it. The iside circle is 1.85 ( The outside is 1.66)
 
Another thing you can do is create a custom project size in Premiere for whatever pixel size you want. I'm cutting a 90 minute feature right now and I have created a custom 2:35:1 project size (720x360) in SD for proxies. When I online with the HD footage I can create another custom project, import the timeline, relink the files and have everything in 2:35 HD with no dataspace lost to bars.
 
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