16:9 Export Problem 1

[cockleboat]

I use Premier 6.5. I have captured my video in 16:9 and my clips are ok if unchanged but if i modify a clip, for example by changing its speed to 25%, the exported clip squashes into 'letterbox' bars. The same also happens with my imported stills and the photos subjects apppear short & fat. The stills are saved as .psd 768x576 files before importing them. I have played with pixel sizes and aspect ratio but nothing i do seems to help. Any one know what i'm doing wrong ? This is realy urgent because this is a video of my sisters wedding and she is nagging the hell out of me to finish it.:-(

 

[Akribie]

Have you looked at the Settings Viewer and confirmed that you are working in a 16x9 project?

 

[cockleboat]

Yes. The project setting is D1/DV PAL Widescreen 16:9(1.422).
Most of my clips playback ok it is only stills, titles and clips that I have changed the effects for that are affected. I replicated this in a test project by putting in one good clip. I then razored it into 2 and changed the speed of the second half to 25%. Sure enough on playback the first half is ok, the second half shrinks into letterbox.

 

[Akribie]

OK. I work PAL, too, and keep a copy of 6.5 for reference and some work.

Using the Premiere DV PAL preset for WS, and with a native 16x9 clip, I razored out a section and changed speed to 25% as you describe. Rendered and played back. No sign of letterboxing or other visual anomaly.

So I am guessing that you are looking at something specific to your system

Do you use a proprietary capture card? If so, it is possible that there is something there to investigate on the manufacturer's forum.

Otherwise, it might be worth trying a new Premiere Preferences file by starting the program with CTRL+SHIFT until the splash screen appears and then resetting scratch disks etc before resuming edits.

Get rid of all old preview files if you do this and start rendering from scratch again.

 

[cockleboat]

I am embarrassed to say that I have wasted some of your time by not giving you all the facts (not intentional). I felt sure Premiere was causing my problem but in fact the created .AVI file appears OK as you say when played through Windows Media, Real Player, etc. I have been taking the file and making a DVD movie with InterVideo Win DVD Creator 2.0 and it appears to be Win DVD's interpretation of the file that causes the problem. Though I have used this route several times before without issue. I'll carry on digging. Thank you for your help and sorry I wasted your time.

 

[Akribie]

Premiere may not be setting the widescreen flag in a way that is recognised by your external encoder. Why not try encoding direct from the Premiere timeline using the export functions?