16:9 on 4:3 TVs

[Reiner]

When showing an 16:9 filmed movie on a 4:3 TV the pictures are always too high. I don´t get the Widescreen on these TVs. I set the 16:9 option on Premiere, but somehow it will not work. On a 16:9 TV everything works great.

Is there a way with a filter to convert to 4:3 ?

Does anybody has an idea ???

Thanks

Reiner

 

[rhdg]

Amen to that question. Advice on letterboxing the widescreen frame into the 4:3 screen would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Matrox]

Yes, please tell us!!! I have the exact same problem.

 

[rhdg]

I was referred to another web page from the

http://www.zoetrope.com

Virtual Studio, "Directors Building" discussions. The solution, which seems to work is reproduced below. I subsequently ran into trouble exporting my file back to the DV deck but that is likely another problem as I am still very muich in the learning stage on a 30day trial version of P6.

"widescreen for adobe


As we can see from this image, this is a full 16:9 image. We can see more and each side which coins the phrase, "widescreen." As you can see, on a 4:3 TV without a switch for widescreen footage, the image is stretched vertically of creating black bars.

Under Video Effects, go to Perspective then and add the Transform effect to the clip. Now is Effects Controls, adjust the Scale Height to 75% even. (rhdg's additional note - you have to click on the number box and enter 75.0 manually) This will squeeze the image to a true 16:9 image. (Additional note from rhdg - If you have Premier already presenting the correct image in the monitor screen it is easy to become confused. I found I had to make sure the image appeared even more squashed in the monitor screen - it came out correctly on the normal 4:3 playback and will appear correct as when I checked up on the thumbnail image in the bin.) Some people have said 75% is not true. All my test prove to me it is true. One test I did was to create an image 16 pixels wide and 9 pixels high. I then scaled the image, with maintain aspect ratio selected, until the width was 640 pixels. The height was now 360 pixels. I then made an image at 640x480. I scaled the height down until it was a 360 pixels high. The program I used to do this, Corel WEB.PhotoPaint, told me the image was scaled to 75%. I was also e-mailed this conversion formula:

(16/9a)=(4/3)
(1/a)=(9*4)/(16*3)
a=(48/36)=1.3333333333333
the inverse of which is 0.75 or 75%

Be sure to keep a version stretched for when someday, you make the switch to a 16:9 widescreen TV.
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FASTER RENDERING:
Save widescreen.pmt to your hard drive and load in motion. This will produce a true 16:9 image. It will not look perfect though.


Web page produced by Dustin Lucht. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Additional note from rhdg - I apologise for not having saved the web address for you. The computer I use for the web is not the same as the imaging one and it does not like these complicated sites and freezes often. I did not use the widescreen.pmt method mentioned above. The file was available on that web page as a download.

Regards all.