How do I get the black bars when I shoot 16:9?!

[LOGAN L Productions]

I've never shot 16:9 before, but now that I have a new camera I would like to. Well, I know how to film in 16:9 (the picture stretches vertically on a 4:3 screen to hide unwanted parts of the picture), but in post...how to I make the picture viewable on a 4:3 screen with black bars on the top and bottom? How do I UNstretch the picture? I have Adobe Premier 6 LE. Thanks!!!!

[Shaw]

Well that depends on how you are achieving your 16:9 ratio. If you are using an anamorphic adapter you will need to stretch the image in post to 16:9. If your camera masks off the top and bottom of the image then you don't need to do anything. If you play a 16:9 signal on a normal TV your player should be able to recognize this and format the image size - with black bars - by itself.

[LOGAN L Productions]

Originally Posted by Shaw

If your camera masks off the top and bottom of the image then you don't need to do anything. If you play a 16:9 signal on a normal TV your player should be able to recognize this and format the image size - with black bars - by itself.

My camera DOES mask off those parts, but it doesn't show black bars on the LCD...it simply stretches so that the top and bottom are off screen. Then, in post it goes back to normal for editing, but as soon as I export it again, it goes back to being stretched. especially in .mov format. I can't for the life of me get black bars...it just remains stretched and distorted.

[LOGAN L Productions]

P.S. My camera has 16:9 mode, so no I don't use an anamorphic lense.

[Shaw]

Hmm that's odd. It sounds like your camera is actually using an electronic squeeze mode. Are you certain that it masks the image?

Are you using a 16:9 project in premiere? What are your export settings?

[LOGAN L Productions]

...I don't know what electronic squeez mode is, but it does NOT squeez the image. it stretches it. everyone in the frame looks tall and skinny, hence the normal top and bottom of the normal 3:4 picture are off frame. I'm not sure you understand what I'm saying.

....In Adobe, I edit in 16:9 mode...so during that process it looks like it should. When I export, it shows a demo which is still 16:9...so it still looks like it should. However, it returns to it's original stretched state (4:3) when I play it in windows media player, real player, DivX, etc. I fixed that a little bit (it's still not 16:9...more like 16:11 or something with smaller black bars and a slightly stretched picture)

In Quicktime it refuses to change from 4:3 no matter what the settings. I can't do it!! Do I have to use a separate program for this?

...Most importantly, if I write this on a DVD, will the DVD or TV fix it to 16:9 with black bars automatically?

I export it into 16:9, BTW...and I still have these problems.

[Shaw]

Hmm I'm not sure what the problem is. I'll start up premiere and mess around with it today and see if I can't come up with a more useful comment

>>
...Most importantly, if I write this on a DVD, will the DVD or TV fix it to 16:9 with black bars automatically?
<<

Yes it may very well play back normally on a TV. I don't know for sure though.

[LOGAN L Productions]

You don't have to do all that...I'll just experiment for myself (burn a DVD, etc.), but if anyone already knows; feel free to share!

[Shaw]

Actually I'm rather curious myself now! I probably won't come up with anything but who knows

[LOGAN L Productions]

cool, hehe.

[ahab]

I think I can help! We just did this on a DV short that we needed to put on VHS. We shot 16:9 using a DVC-Pro camera. Not sure if this is the best way, but it worked for us!

You're camera has the kind of 16:9 mode that works by stretching the picture to fill a 4:3 frame (which is why it looks stretched in the viewfinder). If you attempt to play this tape back on any monitor that doesn't have 16:9 capability, it will look "stretched". This is because you have actually recorded a 4:3 picture, but the camera electronically stretches and squishes it to take advantage of the most pixels available. You've got more pixels this way, which means more "data", and better quality. This is better than simple "letterboxing" or "masking" the frame which is what many consumer cameras do. The important thing to remember is that no matter what happens, you actually are editing a 4:3 piece of data.

Now what happens when you edit? Your edit system (in this case Premiere) lets you "tell" it that you're using a 16:9 video so it "displays" the picture "squished" while you're editing, so it looks "correct" on screen. Whatever you put in, Premiere will display in a 16:9 window, regardless of what the aspect was when you shot. Since you did shoot in 16:9, it looks correct when Premiere does this. The key thing to remember is, you still have a 4:3 picture, Premiere is just showing it to in 16:9 format.

SO, if you plan to lay this off to any kind of deck that doesn't natively record/display in 16:9 format (such as VHS) you are going to need to use an effects program to change the vertical size of the image. You can do this right in Premiere, we used BorisFX because we were editing in Media100. Basically, you have to process the entire movie so the picture is 100% Horizontal size and 74.2% Vertical (not sure about that number) size. Then you can spit it out to whatever 4:3 tape format you want and it will be letterboxed. However, it will now be letterboxed not matter what you play it on, even 16:9 monitor.

If you want to make a digital file, QuickTime, WMV, whatever, it shoudl be simpler. Just export the movie with it's height as 74.2% of its width. Or if you have high-quality uncompressed file already, you should be able to run it through something like Cleaner to do the size conversion.

Hope this helps!

[LOGAN L Productions]

Thankyou sooo much Ahab!!! You've helped a lot. I found a way to do this in After effects. I'm pretty sure it's not the best way, but it works. Thanks.