Premiere Pro Video effects - comparing one to another

[longlostname]

I have a video project that I am working on that revolves around some of my family's 1960's 8mm home movies. I had the 8mm reels converted to DVD and I am now going through them trying to improve some of the quality where I can. I am wanting to make necessary changes but still retain the best video quality that I can. I am using Premiere Pro v1.

There are 2 things that I feel can be addressed.

First of all, the frame size. In the 8mm-to-DVD conversion, the resulting frame size is 704x480. And the video shows the actual ragged edge of the film reel all the way around the frame. I want to remove this ragged edge, but for DVD output, I assume that I want to have a 720x480 frame. I have 3 ways that I am aware of to resolve this.

Effects/Video Effects
.../Distort/Transform/Uniform Scale/Scale Height
.../Transform/Clip
.../Transform/Crop

Which one of these ways is a preferrable way to address this issue. Are there pluses/minuses to each?

Next, the image brightness and contrast. There seem to be 4 choices for this:

Effects/Video Effects
.../Adjust/Brightness & Contrast/Brightness & .../Adjust/Brightness & Contrast/Contrast
.../Adjust/Levels/(RGB) Gamma
.../Adjust/ProcAmp/Brightness & .../Adjust/ProcAmp/Contrast
.../Image Control/Gamma Correction/Gamma

Can I please get some input on which of these controls is most effective?

In the
Effects/Video Effects
.../Adjust/Levels/Setup
there are controls to specify the highlights, midtones, and shadows. Can someone please direct me to some documentation that can teach me how to correctly use these controls? Teach me how to correctly interpret the histogram, and identify the highlight, midtone, and shadow?

I have already read the Adobe Premiere Pro Bible section covering each of these effects, but information provided is very thin. I would like a deeper explanation of each of the effects and when they are best applied. It appears that some of the controls are duplicated, but that does not seem to make sense. I have tried using each of these effects already, but the resulting improvement is very subjective.

I posted this message on the Adobe Premiere Pro forum but I did not get as much detail as I am wanting.

Can I please get some input and direction on this?

Thanks.

[edDV]

What format is the transfer? Are these individual frames?

DV/DVD format is 704x480 for 4:3 (or 720x480 with black side stripes).

If the frames are 640x480, just import them into a 704x480 DV format project and they should H resize. If you want to get rid of the ragged edges, crop will cause a vertical resize which may lower quality. Experiment. Better to use a border to mask the edge.

Most TV sets will hide the edges with overscan.

[longlostname]

edDV,

Thank you very much for the response! This is very interesting information.

The result of the 8mm-to-DVD process is that I submitted multiple reels of 8mm to the multimedia conversion company and the gave me back one DVD with the video on it.

The properties of the .VOB files show them to have a frame size of 704 x 480 and a Pixel Aspect Ratio of 0.900.
The default properties of the Premiere project are Frame Size of 720 x 480 and Pixel Aspect Ratio of 0.900.

Yes, there are individual frames.

I was hoping to be able to get rid of the ragged edge of the frame and have the remaining image fill the frame, but still be in keeping with DVD standards for video frame specifications, and still retain as much image quality as possible.

[edDV]

edDV,

Thank you very much for the response! This is very interesting information.

The result of the 8mm-to-DVD process is that I submitted multiple reels of 8mm to the multimedia conversion company and the gave me back one DVD with the video on it.

The properties of the .VOB files show them to have a frame size of 704 x 480 and a Pixel Aspect Ratio of 0.900.
The default properties of the Premiere project are Frame Size of 720 x 480 and Pixel Aspect Ratio of 0.900.

Yes, there are individual frames.

I was hoping to be able to get rid of the ragged edge of the frame and have the remaining image fill the frame, but still be in keeping with DVD standards for video frame specifications, and still retain as much image quality as possible.

You can set a 704x480 project with no resize and then overlay a mask border to hide the edges or you can crop and resize which will blur the image somewhat. Test both methods and choose which you like.