Funky Aspect output in 1.5

Eraserhead2416

Eraserhead2416

Active member
Picked everything back up after nearly a year-long hiatus from video production, and I've pretty much forgotten a lot of the little things.

I shot a small church concert a long time ago, and have finaly picked the tape back up and have started work making a final version.

I used the 24p NTSC capture settings in 1.5, and it all seemed peachy. I put everything together and exported to DV AVI. To my horror, a problem.

Seems I did something not quite right with the aspect ratio. I shot with bars, not stretch. Instead of simply having bars on the top and bottom, the video is squished vertically, and there's black spacing on the sides as well. Basically, playing it in WMP at full screen results in a small and squished picture.

After this, I went back into PP and did the interpret footage for DV 0.9 (I think) That made the video full in the preview window, save for the black bars on top and bottom, which was intentional. Yet still the footage in the timeline is squished. When displayed on DV Hardware out the firewire, it is also framed in black and squished.

This is really irritating and I know it must be simple. Any answers you have would be helpful. Also, since PP1.5 seems to have never ending exporting problems for me, is there a website that can host ~100MB files for free? I could then SHOW what's going wrong. But everything I've come across always hangs on the uploading part (I leave for work and come back to nothing being accomplished, and I don't have a firewall)

This is why I stopped all my work to begin with- nothing simply just works on its own. But that's why I have all of you. I love you guys. Sniff.
 
Sigh, I knew it was easy.

When starting, I set the project's format for widescreen, even though with the widescreen bars it's technically still 4:3...

If anyone else has done this, join me in slapping ourselves.

So I have to start from scratch! Again! Thanks for letting me work out my own problem. I'll post a real question soon, I bet. Later!
 
Just so you don't have to start from scratch...

You could make a new Sequence, and drop your original sequence onto it. Then in the effects controls, horizontally scale it so it fills the whole frame (it'll probably look weird, don't worry). Export that as an AVI, and then import the AVI into a 4:3 project and see if you can do the Interpret as DV 0.9
 
I'll definitely remember that if it happens again. I've already recaptured (40 mins, no prob).

In media encoder, I've got the export set to 4:3 and that gives me the correct size and framing on exported video. I'm noticing an odd shimmer or minor flashing to the video, though. And it doesn't seem as crystal clear as I'd like... I know I've read bits about the shimmer, so I'll track some threads down to hopefully correct that. Must have something to do with pulldown settings in encoder. Just wish I could remember if I shot this 24p or 24pa...
 
Another tip if you're going out to WMV:

In Adobe Media Encoder, add a "Pre Encoding Task" Crop. Select the stretch checkbox, change the timecode for the little preview to a frame where you can see some video, and then turn the "Top" and "Bottom" numbers up until your letterboxing disappears (your image is going to be vertically stretched).

Then in your "Audiences," drop the height down by the same amount. For example, using the Widescreen title preset (wider than 16:9, more like cinemascope), I crop 90 pixels off the top and bottom. Then, in Audiences, the default is 640x480. So I make it 640x300 (subtracting the top 90 and the bottom 90).

This will result in an encoded file that's just your video, so you won't be wasting bandwidth on black bars.
 
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