scaling question

[hoodleehoo]

I have files imported into premiere pro cs4 (win 7) from a TV source that is 720x480i but hauppage did a poor job with the aspect ratio. So, there's black all around the video: black bars on the sides like it's a 4x3 playing on widescreen, but then black bars on top and bottom since it's not 4x3 it's widescreen! You'd think it would be full screen then, but it doesn't record that way. Dumb!

The end goal is a 640x360 output. I could obviously zoom in to make it full screen and then shrink the whole thing down, but that seems counter productive. Wouldn't that degrade the quality as opposed to just cutting the edges off? If I could just cut the edges off, wouldn't that end up being really close to 640x360?

[jagabo]

I have files imported into premiere pro cs4 (win 7) from a TV source that is 720x480i but hauppage did a poor job with the aspect ratio. So, there's black all around the video: black bars on the sides like it's a 4x3 playing on widescreen, but then black bars on top and bottom since it's not 4x3 it's widescreen! You'd think it would be full screen then, but it doesn't record that way. Dumb!

No, that's the picture it received. Blame your video source, not the capture device.

The end goal is a 640x360 output. I could obviously zoom in to make it full screen and then shrink the whole thing down, but that seems counter productive. Wouldn't that degrade the quality as opposed to just cutting the edges off? If I could just cut the edges off, wouldn't that end up being really close to 640x360?

It depends on your goal for the video. If you're making a DVD you can't use 640x360. If you're just making a video file (AVI, MP4, MKV, etc.) you can use 640x360.