Aspect Ratio Issue

AnnaMayBelle · Post by **AnnaMayBelle** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 8:00 pm

I've been a mostly self-taught AMV creator for a couple of years now, but I've realized that there's something about my videos on a technical level that just doesn't measure up to the works of others. So I've been doing what every AMV creator should from the start, and reading along with A&E's Technical Guides to All Things Audio and Video mk 2. My mother (Ma Belle as you might know her) is currently working on an FLCL video, and she decided to follow along with the guide's instructions as well when she began her project.

Well we've hit a bit of a snag. The video is ready for export, which is of course the most frustrating point to run into a problem. We're following the instructions in Exporting your video from Premiere Pro to the letter, including this tidbit:

Pixel Aspect Ratio - You will always want to set this to Square Pixels to be sure of your output.

Well, when we did that, our "4:1" changed to "3:2". We both raised an eyebrow at this and doublechecked with the screenshot in the tutorial, but upon seeing that the screenshot looked the same, we thought nothing of it. But after the render was finished, we saw that her 720x480 video, while remaining the same dimensions, now had black bars on either side of the film! We haven't measured for certain but it looks like it's become a 640x480 video.

Now, the question is this... Did we do something wrong? Is the video supposed to be like that, and get the bars cropped off later in VirtualDub? If it's not supposed to be like that, what should she do to fix it? She still has her project file and source, so we can render a new copy if need be.

I appreciate the help.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 8:12 pm

What was your project resolution, and what resolution are your source files at?

AnnaMayBelle · Post by **AnnaMayBelle** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 9:40 pm

Project res, and source, are all 720x480

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 9:43 pm

How about the project aspect ratio setting and the video clips in the library? All square pixels (1.0)?

AnnaMayBelle · Post by **AnnaMayBelle** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 9:48 pm

I just now realized... The source is all 1.0 but the project settings say NTSC 0.9

...please tell me we don't have to start over?

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 9:51 pm

Well, what happens if you export with a PAR of 0.9? Does it come out at normal 720x480? If so, then you're probably fine.

Bakadeshi · Post by **Bakadeshi** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 9:52 pm

AnnaMayBelle wrote:I just now realized... The source is all 1.0 but the project settings say NTSC 0.9

...please tell me we don't have to start over?

unfortuinately Premeire doesn;t let you change the project settings once you already create it. you would either have to create a new porject with the proper settings and import the old project into it (which I have done in the past to correct inproper project resolutions that I forgot to change before start editing) , or export as 0.9 and resize if nessisary in virtualdubmod.

If anyone else knows another way I don't know, feel free to contribute.

AnnaMayBelle · Post by **AnnaMayBelle** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 9:56 pm

Trying that now, we should have the video in about five minutes. Ma's having a minor panic attack right now though... Her major question at the moment though is "Even if it comes out okay on my screen, is it going to look right on the big screen at a convention if it's not the aspect ratio of the source?"

AnnaMayBelle · Post by **AnnaMayBelle** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 10:15 pm

Hate to doublepost, but for lack of an Edit button...

The PAR 0.9 render looks good, no bars or glitches of any kind! But Ma's still asking "But is it going to look good on the big screen?", and with my limited experience, all I can really answer with is "...I think so?"

And Bakadeshi, would importing a new project into an old one fix an issue with an idiot such as myself doing 3/4 of their video in a project set to "Lower Field First" when their source is Progressive?

And as a side note, I absolutely love Zetsumo... It was one of my favorite AWA Pro entries and it's inspired me to want to learn more about masking and frame-by-frame editing in Photoshop.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 10:27 pm

AnnaMayBelle wrote:The PAR 0.9 render looks good, no bars or glitches of any kind! But Ma's still asking "But is it going to look good on the big screen?", and with my limited experience, all I can really answer with is "...I think so?"

Just make sure you encode the MPEG with the proper settings. I cover all that here:
http://www.aquilinestudios.org/mpegforcons.html