Help! Why black borders all around??

[Mavoz]

I'm a babe in the wood with my new HVX and the world of 16x9 filming..and have struck grief on my first DV capture to Premiere Pro 2.0.

For some reason I've got a black border completely around the DV footage when I look at it in Premiere Pro.


The footage was recorded with the Camera setup option of Aspect Conv = Letter Box
(I'm starting to think this may indeed be a monumental mistake? This is not the way to record 16x9??)

The project settings say:

D1/DV PAL Widescreen 16:9 (1.422)

(When I set up the project I just chose the standard Widescreen DV Pal option at 48kHz)

The clip properties say:

720x576 (1.067)

Can anyone figure work out why I've got a black border on all 4 sides?
The footage itself all looks in right proportion...just somewhat reduced to the middle of the frame.
(If I scale the footage up 135% it actually fits right...but not sure why I would need to do this!!)

Hopefully there is an explanation and I haven't just accidently selected the "Add a big black border to your footage" feature or something.

thanks!

EDIT.....

think I may be figuring this out....when I've chosen Aspect Conv: Letter Box...it has literally added black borders top and bottom...hence reducing size....

so basically all my footage has been effectively reduced in resolution??

So the HVX just records 16x9 regardless..and I should have left it "normal" right?

This "Aspect Conv" feature has me totally confused...and it looks like I may have wrecked my first efforts filming with it..I simply wanted to record 16x9 onto DV tape with the best method possible.

Can anyone please clarify! Have I indeed just significantly reduced the quality of my footage by choosing this dreaded "letter box"?

 

[mikkowilson]

Yeah, unfortunatly "Letterbox" mode is simply a 4:3 signal with a 16:9 fram shrunk into it.

Premiere is calcing correctly based on the height of the frame, and it can't tell there are balck bars there. All you can do in this case is to up-scale your footage in Premiere.


In deed the correct true 16:9 shooting method is "squeeze" mode.


"Letterbox" ALWAYS referes to addinin in those black bars to the footages, either during display, or (unfortunatly in your case) during recording.

- Mikko

 

[Mavoz]

Yeah, unfortunatly "Letterbox" mode is simply a 4:3 signal with a 16:9 fram shrunk into it.

Premiere is calcing correctly based on the height of the frame, and it can't tell there are balck bars there. All you can do in this case is to up-scale your footage in Premiere.


In deed the correct true 16:9 shooting method is "squeeze" mode.


"Letterbox" ALWAYS referes to addinin in those black bars to the footages, either during display, or (unfortunatly in your case) during recording.

- Mikko

Thanks Mikko...I appreciate the feedback and the reply!
Is sad news though...if only I would have known beforehand that "Squeeze" was the best option...I tried to find out but didn't understand the manually properly....the name "Squeeze" put me off as it sounded like it was going to do one of those weird distortion things...

I just assumed "Letter box" was what I wanted..ie for 16x9..but can now see this was a bad bad mistake!

Now I have to figure out how on earth to "rescue" the situation!

Anyway thank you...will probably have a few days of mourning the fact that I have succesfully butchered my footage...