How to add 16:9 crop (letterbox) in Premiere?

Ralph Oshiro

Ralph Oshiro

Veteran
I know this is somewhere here on the forums, but I can't find it. I have some footage that was shot full-screen 4:3. I want to add the black bars at the top and bottom (letterbox) of the frame to contain a 16:9 image area that will exactly match footage I've shot using the in-camera 16:9 crop (NOT squeeze). Thanks!
 
theres a preset overlay in the PPRO titler, or yu can just make a 720x486 file with letterbox bars.. white in middle or transparent if photoshop file. if you use white just use a luma key to key out white..
 
Okay, instead, I'm using the VIDEO EFFECTS/TRANSFORM/CROP effect in Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5, which seems to do the trick quite easily. The "top" and "bottom" crop values in the effects control dialogue box for the crop effect appear to be in percentages (rather than pixels). I'm doing this by trial-and-error to match the in-camera crop right now.
 
..not sure. ive never used it from there. but i think the preset thing is either up top left or bottom right.. .. theres a load preset button or something like that if i recall right. if you cant find it right away just open up help and search for "lower third" or graphic overlay.. and it should have something about them cause theres alot of title design stuff like that in there too from what I remember.
 
Okay, with a fine-point pencil to my CRT monitor, it looks like values of '11.1' for top and bottom crop values is pretty darned close to the in-camera crop. I'm going with that.
 
try typing in 11.5 or 10.5 whichever way you need to go. it still shows the whole # but if i remember right, it does register the decimal values like AE. ...sorry i cant think right today.. alot on my mind.
 
iamloser said:
try typing in 11.5 or 10.5 whichever way you need to go. it still shows the whole # but if i remember right, it does register the decimal values like AE. ...sorry i cant think right today.. alot on my mind.
Click to expand...
Yup, 11.1! Thanks for your help anyway, loser--your prompt reply to my post is much appreciated!
 
The main disadvantage of using the CROP effect is that if you want to shift the image up or down in the frame to improve the crop, the CROP effect will shift up and down with the image. Using a matte in another video track avoids this problem.

There's a letterbox matte preset in the Premiere Titler under 'templates' icon. That's the icon at the top of stacked paged with a 'T' on the top page. Under templates, look for 'Title Designer Presets' and then 'Mattes_7'.

-Dan
 
Just FYI, the Premiere matte preset appears to create a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen effect--as opposed to the 1.85:1 letterbox of the DVX. A 1.85:1 matte would be ideal. I suppose you can always manually adjust the "black bars" of the matte to these dimensions.
 
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