Importing Clips of odd ratios

[JackaL1984]

Hi

I'm new to Premiere so forgive the ignorance. I am playing with a Video clip that is an extremely odd 592:320 ratio. What is the best way to create a project and import it without losing quality? I tried just making a custom clip with those dimensions but that didn't help. It actually made it worse.
Thanks

Chris

 

[LRSmith]

Under Video Options, selection maintain aspect ratio. That should retain your original resolution. Your video will be appear in original size, although your output will still be at your project settings.

 

[JackaL1984]

I am quite uncertain as to how things work. I hav a different clip. My clip is standard aspect ratio 4:3. That's okay... I cannot make a sequence with the size that is exactly the size of the clip (320:240). When I try to make that, what pixel aspect ratio do I use? I am using version Premiere Pro 1.5... I cannot find maintain aspect ratio anywhere. Thanks
Chris

 

[LRSmith]

I misunderstood your question - I was thinking your project settings had a larger video resolution than your imported clip, and you were seeing degradation when it resized your clip to the larger resolution.

I have Premiere 6.5, so I'm probably of little help in navigating you around Pro 1.5. But...it seems to me you could make your project settings something like 720x480 resolution, and then import your 592:320 clip (which isn't 4:3 BTW). In 6.5, you can right click on the clip, selection Video Options, then maintain aspect ratio. At least that works for stills, I think it would work for clips too. Where this option is in Pro 1.5 I do not know.

Assuming you have success this far, you should have options to export at 320:240 resolution, though your project settings are at 720:480. It's been a while, but I remember doing this with another project sometime back.

Sorry for the generalizations, I'm stabbing in the dark here as I don't have ready access to Premiere right now to test my suggestions. I could be dead wrong on the above.

 

[Akribie]

What are you trying to achieve at the end of the process?

Do you want to use the 'odd' frame size and output to a computer-only format, or are you looking to export to tape?

If the former, you could create a custom project size under New Project/Custom Settings in Video for Windows mode and keep the 'odd' size.

If the latter, assuming you have the necessary CODEC so that PPro can import the footage, you have two main choices. Stretch to fit the frame, or accept a border so that you do not cause loss of definition by zooming in.

By default, PPro retains source size, so a smaller clip will be placed within the project frame. You can override this in Project General Preferences so that the footage scales to frame size when dragged to the timeline (quite different from P6.5 and back) but this should not affect aspect ration. To change aspect ratio, use the Motion Effect which, again unlike P6.5 and back, uses all the source pixels.