Creating a mask in Premiere 6.5 to cover distorted band?

[nzo]

I'm converting archival VHS footage to DV using a Canopus ADVC-100.

I notice a 4 to 5mm distorted band at the bottom of all captured AVIs that I'm told is normally hidden by the "safe" zones of a TV.

It was suggested I create a 'mask' to cover this distorted strip in Prem 6.5, but I'm not sure how to do this - can anyone point me to some info?

Much appreciated

John W

[Forum Troll]

An alternate method would be the crop function in TMPGENC, if you are going to encode them to MPEG-2.

[canadateck]

I notice a 4 to 5mm distorted band at the bottom of all captured AVIs that I'm told is normally hidden by the "safe" zones of a TV.

You answered your own question..LOL

If it's not over scan then you may have to crop it.

[canadateck]

Do a test burn, and see if it's gone.In most cases it will be.

[nzo]

That was fast Many thanks.

I guess I was thinking that some folks would watch home movies on their PCs, not on TV.

Sooo...creating a mask in Prem. Is this easy to do?

John

[canadateck]

Very easy to do, But i would just encode to mpeg2 and use DVD player sofware to play it, There should be a mask tool in Premiere, so you would just open the video in the source monitor , and appy the mask to the area, i think you may have to stretch it out to the same duration as the Video, or it may stay static, I dont use Premiere, but I'm sure it cant be to different from other apps.

What i said above may or maynot be right..But it's a starting point..

[BSR]

I can do it in VirtualdubMOD, AVISYNTH, and TMPGEnc.
I have no idea how to do it it Premiere.

There is someone with the username racer-x, this is his favorite editor.
Here is a guide by him, try posting your question there or by emailing him.
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=192278

I'm curious about it too, so if you find out, make sure to post what you find.

Edit- depending on how much noise is there, it's a good idea to mask it so you don't waste bitrate encoding the noise, but this is all relative to what your trying to achieve.

[pijetro]

Use the clip function...

Yes, overscanning can hide this, but the biggest advantage is, the encoder doesn't need to tie up unnessecary bitrate for scribble....

[nzo]

Thanks BSR

I've PM'd racer-x. Will get back if I find out info.

[lordsmurf]

The MASK filter.

[nzo]

Reply from racer-x:

The best place to learn about masks and many other things in Premiere 6.5 is here:

http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/videotutorial/tut_premiere65.htm

He's got a lot of tutorial videos you can download. They are very informative and I sugest you download all of them. They are in WMV format.

Cheers.

[shutterbug]

If I remember correctly, there's a function in Premiere that will clip a number of pixels (that you specify) to eliminate the band at the bottom of your video. I think it's part of the rendering menu. I don't have Premiere installed at the moment to give you more info, but it might be worth a look.

[pijetro]

Pijetro wrote:

Look above...

[racer-x]

One cool thing about layer masks is they don't have to be boring. Sure you can crop the video and forget it, but you can also create a cool frame for it that will also hide the unsightly scan lines.

An easy way to do that, is export a frame from the clip. Open it in Photoshop or equivalent (if there really is an equivalent). Add an empty layer to it. you can color it black or any NTSC safe color you want. Use the crop tool to select the part of the video you want diplayed through the colored layer and delete it so you'll be able to see the video through the transparency. You can get fancy and make the frame 3-d for a nicer effect. Now delete the background layer leaving only the frame layer and save as a psd.

Import frame.psd into Premiere 6.5 and place on the video track above the video clip. Now strech it to cover the length of the video clip. Right-click on the frame psd and select Set Transparency. Choose White Alpha Matte for Transparency format. You should now be able to see the video play inside the frame you created.

It's been a while since I've used Premiere 6.5, I'm using Premiere Pro now. Premiere Pro auto detects most transparent layers by default, but not version 6.5, you need to manually set it.

[nzo]

Thanks racer-x. That's great