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Adding Black Bars to Premier project?

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Im currently re-editing a sequence from Superman II and have come across a problem.

Basically, I have zoomed in on a piece of footage but when iv done so, its also put footage 'over' where the black bars should be.


What I need to do is add black bars over the top, now doing this is to simply load up a NTSC 720x486 template in Photoshop, making the background transparent and then adding the black bars...................but I dont know how thick to make them. Iv tried making them 60pixels each but that wasnt enough, then I tried 85 pixels based on this formula.:

Equate like so: 720/h = 16/9 cross multiply to get the value of h, which works out to 405. So if the video is supposed to be 405 pixels high, then 576-405 = 171 which is the total height of the bars. Divide that by two and you get 85.5, so make one bar 85 pixels high, and the other 86 pixels high.


But that was too much...so I then made it 80 high and that was too much.

Does anyone know how high to make the pixels for sure?

This way, I can then overlay these black bars and no matter where I reposition the footage I wont lose the black bars.
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sorry, iv put this in the wrong forum.
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The variables are incorrect. You want the black bars over a 16:9 ratio for a film 2.35:1.

1/2.35 = x/720. Cross multiply and get x = 306. Subtract that from 360 height for 16:9 dvd video source and you get 54. Divide by 2 and you get 27.

Why is the template 720x486 and not 720x480?

I think 27 each is right, but I don't know why--you said making them 60 pixels each wasn't big enough. Maybe putting together your template with a height of 360 instead makes my equation work. I'm sorry I didn't come in with stock knowledge and instead calculated it myself (and might've calculated it wrong. But that's what I would do.

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Cheers for looking into it Paul, mathematics is not my strong point so kudos to you for looking into it. Very kind.

ElltheEwok...something that doesent include weird mathermitcal formulas is right up my street so i'l do that!
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Doing that worked a treat I have to say...although initially I did the bottom black bar and copied that to the top. But I then found out that the top black bar is slightly smaller.

But im happy with the finished results...here they are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uifWLvFKteU
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Wouldn't it be better to just make the footage anamorphic instead of letterboxing it (which is what my understanding of what you're doing is)? And if so, how would one turn letterboxed footage into anamorphic in a program like Premiere?

Take care,
Sojourn
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Even anamorphic it will still require black bars if the source is scope.
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What exactly do you mean by scope?

Take care,
Sojourn
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Film format that used anamorphic prints (CinemaScope), but basically anything with an aspect ratio around 2.35:1.

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If that's the case (thanks for your explanation, by the way!), then why would the black bars be necessary? I thought anamorphic meant that there weren't black bars, and that the image was automatically resizing to fit on whatever screen it's playing on -- is this just resizing from 16:9 to 2.35:1, or is it full letterboxing (i.e. 2.35:1 image in a 4:3 image)?

Take care,
Sojourn
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If the source image is 16:9 widescreen then there are no need for black bars, but if it is 2.35:1 then even on a 16:9 set (which is about 1.77:1) then obviously black bars would need to be displayed on the 16:9 TV or the picture would be all stretched.

So effectively before the anamorphic DVD is encoded the 2.35 image has black bars added to it to make it fill a 16:9 (1.77:1) screen.

If it wasn't an anamorphic DVD (i.e. letterbox) it would have much larger black bars added to the 2.35:1 picture to make it fill a 4:3 (1.33:1) screen.
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I guess a better answer would be that the term "anamorphic" when applied to DVDs means that the picture information is sized to fit a 16:9 screen,
i.e. the 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL) pixels are all used for picture information if the source footage is 16:9, and the picture would appear vertically stretched (everyone is tall and skinny) on a 4:3 television, but no pixels are 'wasted' on black bars. But if the source is any wider than 16:9 then pixels have to be used for black bars.

Ananmorphic DVD *doesn't* mean that the DVD uses all the pixels for picture information regardless of the aspect ratio of the source footage.

If it did you would have different pixel shapes for 16:9, 2.35:1, 1.85:1, 2.22:1 etc. and the TV or DVD player would have to work it out, the people doing the encoding would have to have different workflows - it just wouldn't be practical.
With the move to fixed resolution panel displays, it wouldn't make any quality difference anyway, even if you used all 720x480 pixels to encode just the picture from a 2.35:1 source, you would still have to crush the picture down to 2:35.1 to display it on the 16:9 screen using the exact same pixels on the display as a standard anamorphic DVD with black bars encoded.

A non anamorphic (letterbox) DVD the 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL) pixels are *not* used for picture information if the source footage is 16:9, so black bars are encoded into the picture and everyone doesn't look stretched on a 4:3 television, but the amount of pixels used for the picture information is less.

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I think I understand now. I had thought that "Anamorphic" meant that the TV/DVD player was automatically resizing the image for you, to make the most of whatever screen resolution you had. Does what you are saying mean, though, that if in the future, widescreen televisions change from being 16:9 to 2.35:1, "Anamorphic" would start becoming as outdated as "letterboxing" currently is for 16:9 TVs -- as in, the anamorphic discs would essentially be "letterboxed" for a 16:9 screen, therefore putting black bars on not only the top and bottom, but also the left and right of a 2.35:1 screen?

I feel like TVs/DVD players are (or at least should be) smarter than this by now -- if I can take a video file and play it through a DivX Player on my 15" (fullscreen) laptop screen, and then take the same file and play it on my friend's computer, through the DivX player on his machine, which is displaying it on his 15.4" widescreen laptop screen, and the aspect ratio remains untouched (i.e. the video file is not distorted in any way, the computer just automatically adjusts how much of the screen it takes up, and automatically adds the necessary black bars), then why can't TVs and DVD players do the same thing? A video iPod, when hooked up to different televisions, also does the same thing -- on a widescreen television, it plays the video with the appropriate aspect ratio, and does the same for a fullscreen television.

If that's the case, then shouldn't "anamorphic" video really "morph" and adapt to whatever screen it is being displayed on?

Take care,
Sojourn