Transform 1.78:1 footage to 2.35:1 or 2.40:1 in Premiere?

refocusedmedia

refocusedmedia

Veteran
I'm trying to make a mashup trailer for fun. The trailer is in 2.35:1 or 2.40:1, and the video I'm mashing it up with is standard 720p / 1.78:1 footage.


Adding the black bars via cropping is what I'm doing now, but I was just curious if there is a way to compress & stretch the footage in post, similar to how anamorphic lens would do it in camera.


If this is not possible, that is fine. Just wanted to see and am uninformed on this particular topic.


Thanks!
 
The more I think about it, the more unlikely this seems to be as there is no image data available to "stretch". So it would either introduce artifacts or it would be distorted. Correct?
 
Unless there was a 'squeeze' in-camera it is difficult to understand what you might achieve. Making spherical-widescreen 2.39 in Premiere is as easy as building a custom dimension sequence and then resizing your media. In the output step you will get black bars top and bottom when you choose any standard 16:9 format.
 
It's not really a "resizing." It's just cutting off the top and bottom, just like a crop. You keep the same width.

There's no particular reason to do it as though it's anamorphic, unless you're planning to project through an anamorphic lens.
 
Well, I've already applied the crop using the Crop effect in Premiere.

Initially I was wondering if it was possible to compress and stretch the video so that it fit into the "new" cropped frame better. I've since realized this is probably not possible without skewing/distortion or some other loss of image quality.
 
Correct. If you try to stretch it, you'll get distortion. The crop is the way to go. I like to cut at the clip's native aspect ratio (ie 1920x1080). When I'm done, I create a new sequence that's 1920x800 and import the previous sequence into this. I will also render it at 1920x800. This gives me a 2.40 clip with no black bars, unless it's needed, but the viewing platform takes care of it (youtube, TVs etc-- they all add the black bars automatically)
 
Cool, thanks for helping me figure this out. I'm just gonna stick with cropping, or just leave it alone. Its just a video for fun anyway. Thanks again
 
refocusedmedia said:
Cool, thanks for helping me figure this out. I'm just gonna stick with cropping, or just leave it alone. Its just a video for fun anyway. Thanks again
Click to expand...

You can also 'move' the crop window. If one is using the full side to side image, at least move the 'crop window' up and down. It will give a bit of 'pedestal up/down' to the motion. If you do crop smaller than side to side, you can also add a 'pan' with the crop window. Which is how 'better' transfers from wide screen to 4:3 TV were done back in the olden days...
 
Thanks again everyone. I decided to stick with the cropping but I did adjust the vertical frame and change the crop values accordingly for some scenes. Anyway, for anyone who might care here is the final result:

 
If you just make the black bars in Photoshop with the middle of the frame transparent...save it as a PNG and load it into Premiere, all you gotta do is drop it on top of your entire project, and adjust the anchor point or position value of your clips if you want to change the crop. That's way easier then trying to adjust cropping values and such...
 
If you just make the black bars in Photoshop with the middle of the frame transparent...save it as a PNG and load it into Premiere, all you gotta do is drop it on top of your entire project, and adjust the anchor point or position value of your clips if you want to change the crop. That's way easier then trying to adjust cropping values and such...
Click to expand...
Bad plan. Most people forget to make the black the right shade of black (should be 16,16,16). Better to just place the footage into an 2.40 sequence. You can still repo just like you would with the photoshop layers, but now you have a real 2.40 image and your delivery outlet will add the letter boxing as need.
 
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