Why can't I change pixel size / resolution in Adobe Premiere?

April 17, 2007 9:24 AM

When I change the pixel size in Adobe Premiere Pro...why doesn't it change?

I'm editing DV footage with a partner. He's got an Apple and FCP; I've got a PC and Adobe Premiere 6.0.

Somewhere along the way we realized that my videos, output as 720x480, show up on Quicktime (on both machines) as 640x480.

Premiere seems to have three settings that relate to pixel size:

- The presets, which you select when you start a new project. One of them is "720x480 NTSC for Quicktime," which STILL turns my videos into 640x480 when played on QT.

- Clip > Advanced Options > Pixel Aspect Ratio, which doesn't seem to do anything.

- The Pixel Aspect Ratio menu under Project > Project Settings > Video, which also has no effect.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Is it something I failed to do during capture, forever dooming this footage to black margins when they're played on a Mac?

I've looked all over the web and Adobe's instructions and can't find a solution. Thanks for any suggestions.

posted by Flying Saucer to technology (3 comments total)

720x480 ntsc is dv, or rectangular, pixels. Computer monitors display in square pixels. Quicktime displays in square pixels. The equivalent of 720x480 in square pixels is 720x540. For some reason Quicktime plays this back at 640x480, which works out to the same ratio.
posted by nathancaswell at 9:47 AM on April 17, 2007

But it doesn't seem to be the same ratio, because when my co-editor plays back my videos in Quicktime, there are little black margins on either side.

The "640" seems not to be filling up the "720."

Are you saying those margins won't appear when the pieces are posted on the web or converted to mp2 for DVD?
posted by Flying Saucer at 11:15 AM on April 17, 2007

Can you post a screenshot of what it looks like in Quicktime at 100% size? Or a small clip that I can download and take a look at? I'm a FCP editor so I can't really tell you whats up with Premiere, but I know how the stuff should look in Quicktime. If it's pillar boxing (vertical black bars) it sounds like not stretching your pixels out to square when its changing the res of the frame to 640x480.
posted by nathancaswell at 5:13 PM on April 17, 2007