My Premiere Pro exports give me little black borders on the top and bottom

[CZbwoi]

I got videos off of my uncle's Sony Handycam DCR‑SR68 as well for this family cloud drive I'm planning and that camera's method of transferring video was a tad bit closer to our time here (no capturing, just transferring the MPG video files), was in the process of combining clips of days into their own videos in Premiere, exporting them to h264 mp4 to be placed on the list. And as I'm nearing the end I notice that the exported videos have a small border on the top and bottom that's not present in the originals. And I've worked on these for about 4 days now for no reason now... I can't for the life of me figure out what's wrong, I've exported to preset match source (720x480) which should be exact and the resolution in the description says it is (the source and preview pictures don't even change as you switch back and forth from them), I've done it in widescreen, I've done NTSC DV widescreen, all of them have that border.

I attached two files showing what happens, the first is the original and the second is an export. I hope I'm posting this in the right place. I've been Googling it for answers and have no fix so far.

*note - This didn't happen when I exported DVD rips of VHS backups through Premiere (mostly ripped via Handbrake) that I had to cut stuff out of with Premiere, only with these MPG files from the Sony Handycam DCR‑SR68.

[smrpix]

A short sample of video <10 secs, of both original and exported would be more helpful.

Best guess is that you're somehow deinterlacing and losing the top and bottom half-line -- but that's only a guess.

[CZbwoi]

Here you go, first is the original and second (newtest) is the export. They're both 58 seconds long since I had them done already before you asked me to, hope that's okay.

[aedipuss]

it's just your video player adding borders. here are png's of the actual video.
original

newtest

click on the picture to view full size

[CZbwoi]

It is not, I just tried them both in VLC and in WMP and every time the original would fill up the whole screen and every time the export would give me the two black borders. In both video players. If that was even the case that still doesn't answer why the borders "get added by the video player" when it doesn't do that to the original, I'm trying to stop them from appearing, everywhere.

And they'll usually be playing in both of these video players on family member's computer screens and through Drive so it's not an individual program's thing. There's something else going on here...it's either getting shrinked in video players or altered because I'm not seeing any physical differences, I don't know what's happening.

[Brad]

I can confirm that the videos contain no black borders.

The export is incorrectly tagged as 109:60 instead of 16:9, which is causing the display discrepancy.

[manono]

It is not...

Yes, it is. Your original is 16:9 (1.78:1). Your export has a slightly different aspect ratio of 109:60 (1.82:1). Your 16:9 players are adding the bars.

Edit: vaporeon800 beat me to it. But I have the pictures to prove it!

[Brad]

Or if you believe VLC, the Resolution is 720x482 and the Display Resolution is 720x480. Huh?

[CZbwoi]

Even if I selected match source and others as the presets this was always the case, this is odd. How exactly do I edit the files to make it be 16:9? Or do I have to change something before the export and do them all again? I see no option in Premiere that mentions it's changing to 109:60.

[CZbwoi]

Or if you believe VLC, the Resolution is 720x482 and the Display Resolution is 720x480. Huh?

So I take it you're as baffled as I am?

And to solidify my worries that it's not just happening in my video players, they play on Google Drive (where they'll all be for everyone) with Google's YouTube player the same way, original has no borders and the exports do.

[smrpix]

I'm getting the same strange results exporting from Premiere. Trying Adobe Media Encoder now to see if anything changes.

edit: You may want to start building off of Adobe's YouTube 480p widescreen preset which uses 854x480 square pixels. Choose stretch to Fill in the encoder window.

[poisondeathray]

The short explanation is there are slightly different aspect ratio interpretations. PP uses ITU aspect ratio interpretation

It assumes that NTSC 720x480 16:9 uses a pixel aspect ratio of ~1.2121 (or 40:33) which is slightly wider instead of non ITU aspect ratio interpretation which uses ~1.1852 (or 32:27)

[CZbwoi]

I'm getting the same strange results exporting from Premiere. Trying Adobe Media Encoder now to see if anything changes.

Phew, I'm not alone. Tried it in Encoder as well and no difference, same thing. Even if there was a difference it wouldn't matter because the only reason why I'm inserting multiple clips into Premiere is to combine and cut stuff out before creating the single video.

The short explanation is there are slightly different aspect ratio interpretations. PP uses ITU aspect ratio interpretation

It assumes that NTSC 720x480 16:9 uses a pixel aspect ratio of ~1.2121 (or 40:33) which is slightly wider instead of non ITU aspect ratio interpretation which uses ~1.1852 (or 32:27)

So...how do I change this to the right one? Is there a way to select the original aspect ratio? The answer can't be "don't use Premiere Pro", I think this program is more advanced than this little bug it has. I mean I'm even selecting match source over here and everything else under the sun. :/

[poisondeathray]

So...how do I change this to the right one? Is there a way to select the original aspect ratio? The answer can't be "don't use Premiere Pro", I think this program is more advanced than this little bug it has. I mean I'm even selecting match source over here and everything else under the sun. :/

You can't interpret the AR in PP to the one you want (non ITU).

What are your intended target(s) ? I see h.264/MP4 in your screenshot, but how is this going to be viewed ? What situation or devices ?

The way many people do this , is either frameserve out (using debugmode frameserver or advanced frameserver) or a lossless intermediate (e.g. lagarith, ut video codec, magic yuv), then either A) resize to a square pixel format in something like avisynth /encode x264 or some GUI for it, or B) keep the same dimensions and set the AR to whatever you want either with encoder flags, or container flags.

[CZbwoi]

You can't interpret the AR in PP to the one you want (non ITU).

So you're saying there's no actual fix when exporting through PP? I see even the 4:3 videos, that I've cut through and exported in PP, have that added "the Resolution is 720x482 and the Display Resolution is 720x480" even though they don't have black bars like these videos. Those are fine but still have those extra pixels added into the resolution, so there's something bigger happening here.

What are your intended target(s) ? I see h.264/MP4 in your screenshot, but how is this going to be viewed ? What situation or devices ?

Through Google Drive playback on computers and phones, and through download, so essentially also on computer media players and phone internal video players.

The way many people do this , is either frameserve out (using debugmode frameserver or advanced frameserver) or a lossless intermediate (e.g. lagarith, ut video codec, magic yuv), then either A) resize to a square pixel format in something like avisynth /encode x264 or some GUI for it, or B) keep the same dimensions and set the AR to whatever you want either with encoder flags, or container flags.

Ow...yeah I don't know, this seems like a highly complicated and unnecessary thing to do to simply have your video exported as you want it, or how it originally was. Especially if I have about 30 or so different exports to do with files taken off this camcorder.

[poisondeathray]

The ITU NTSC 4:3 is 10:11, but non ITU is 8:9, so yes, even on 4:3 you get something slightly different

There is no fix within PP that I know of, not even in the newest version. If you could interpret the PAR of the file, the sequence settings, and the export settings to use 32:27, that would be exactly what you want. Because 16/9 = 720/480 * 32/27 exactly . But you can't.

It might be possible to batch process the exported files with a modified ffmpeg build or mp4box to overwrite the AR interpretation either in the bitstream or container

But many people aren't happy with Adobe's licenced Mainconcept/Rovi h264 encoder in the first place. Frankly it's sub par. So it's sort of 3birds/ 1 stone when using the frameserve/lossless intermediate workflow. 1) Better compression quality. 2) The AR interpretation you want 3) and if you want to use a better deinterlacer if you're encoding progressive there are much better ones in avisynth like QTGMC. If you're encoding interlaced it's still "2 birds."

[smrpix]

Within PP the best you're going to do with an h.264 output is 854x480 square pixels.

For editing, set your project to match your source -- 720x480 widescreen

[poisondeathray]

mp4box works fine to patch the AR on your files. It's not re-encoding (not losing extra quality), it's just re-wrapping the audio / video, it's very fast, basically you're limited by your storage transfer I/O . So you should be able to batch process say a folder of mp4's that you exported with AME/PP with a mp4 batch script

MP4Box.exe -par 1=32:27 -add "newtest.mp4#1:fps=29.970" -add "newtest.mp4#2" "mp4box2.mp4"

[poisondeathray]

How did you create "newtest.mp4" ? Because the chroma is messed up. It looks like the chroma was mistreated as progressive instead of interlaced at one point, this results in "chroma ghosting" artifacts

Here is a gif illustration, cropped and simple bob deinterlace, slowed down. Left is original mpeg2, right is your "newtest.mp4"

[CZbwoi]

Within PP the best you're going to do with an h.264 output is 854x480 square pixels.

For editing, set your project to match your source -- 720x480 widescreen

How do I do this? And wouldn't doing this solve my problem when exporting since the project would know the exact aspect ratio of the source now?

mp4box works fine to patch the AR on your files. It's not re-encoding (not losing extra quality), it's just re-wrapping the audio / video, it's very fast, basically you're limited by your storage transfer I/O . So you should be able to batch process say a folder of mp4's that you exported with AME/PP with a mp4 batch script

So I installed this and it gave me something called Osmo4 instead...?

And I've had something called my mp4boxgui 0.6.0.6 for ages but I don't see how to use it with that code you provided and changing the aspect ratio.

How did you create "newtest.mp4" ? Because the chroma is messed up. It looks like the chroma was mistreated as progressive instead of interlaced at one point, this results in "chroma ghosting" artifacts

Here is a gif illustration, cropped and simple bob deinterlace, slowed down. Left is original mpeg2, right is your "newtest.mp4"

Inserting it into Premiere Pro and exporting it with match source to H264 and either the default bitrate of 6 or I dropped it down to 5. I'm gonna say it was the default of 6.
But thank you for noticing that, you have some good eyes, what do you suggest that I do? And if Premiere's giving me all this trouble is there another program I should use to join clips together and cut stuff out of, one that won't give me these aspect problems and this chroma problem? Idk, does Vegas or Avid not have this ratio problem?

[poisondeathray]

If all you're doing is simple "join clips together and cut stuff out" for mpeg2 sources, I would recommend videoredo. You're left with mpeg2, the same type and quality as the original. A few frames might be re-encoded around the cutsite, depending on where you cut. This is known as "smart rendering". The rest of the stream is passed through untouched. Alternatives are solveigmm video splitter, tmpgenc smart renderer. If you're doing more "heavy" editing, more complex projects, then I would use a NLE with some workarounds. They all have various quirks and issues that "more than casual" users will know about, and various workarounds

For mp4box, the new versions install a bunch of stuff including a player. If you just want mp4box.exe, you can use 7zip and extract js.dll, libeay32.dll, libgpac.dll, ssleay32.dll, mp4box.exe . Those are the required files. But the old versions of mp4box.exe found in those GUI's should work fine. But you need to add the par value 32:27 for the non ITU NTSC 16:9 as in the commandline, not sure if you can do it through the GUI or if it allows you to modify the commandline

[CZbwoi]

Thank you, I'll work with those programs tonight. If I would join like 9 videos with videoredo, would the total file size be the combined total size of all those original files put together? Like quite literally nothing changed, or does it compress a bit?

[poisondeathray]

If I would join like 9 videos with videoredo, would the total file size be the combined total size of all those original files put together? Like quite literally nothing changed, or does it compress a bit?

No compression. End to end concatentation will be the total filesize combined (+/- a few bytes, because of header, metadata differences, but the video and audio bitstreams will be identical). But there are free ways to do that too (append mpeg2 files). The utility of videoredo and other smart renderers is the smart rendering. You can cut on any frame. Other GOP editors can only cut on certain specific frames. The short explanation is temporal compression is used in many types of video, and not all frames are completely inclusive alone (they can rely on data from other frames). You're only allowed to cut on those totally complete, independent frames called "I" frames in typical GOP editors that do not re-enocde

[CZbwoi]

Alright, I'll check it out later when I can and report back.

(+/- a few bytes, because of header, metadata differences, but the video and audio bitstreams will be identical). But there are free ways to do that too (append mpeg2 files) append mpeg2 files

Like, how necessary would that be, appending? What actually happens? And what exactly happens when you say header? For metadata I'm assuming you mean things like date modified and whatnot.

Would you also think it's best to convert to another filetype for the long run as mpeg2 is outdated? They'll be on Google Drive ultimately. Why I'm saying is that a weird thing happens when you open up these .MPG files in VLC, it splats the screen with green artifacts for half a second upon opening up. In WMP it doesn't do this, only in VLC. So idk, weird things like that are because it's MPG?

[poisondeathray]

(+/- a few bytes, because of header, metadata differences, but the video and audio bitstreams will be identical). But there are free ways to do that too (append mpeg2 files) append mpeg2 files

Like, how necessary would that be, appending? What actually happens? And what exactly happens when you say header? For metadata I'm assuming you mean things like date modified and what

I don't understand your question about "necessary" or not - that depends on the context

The video and audio are just joined end to end. But the container is slightly different, both are mpeg2 program streams, but the appending process requires some elements to be slightly changed. There is no quality loss to audio or video. If you demux the elementary audio and video they will be the same, it's just the "packaging" that is very slightly changed. It's what's inside that counts.

Would you also think it's best to convert to another filetype for the long run as mpeg2 is outdated? They'll be on Google Drive ultimately. Why I'm saying is that a weird thing happens when you open up these .MPG files in VLC, it splats the screen with green artifacts for half a second upon opening up. In WMP it doesn't do this, only in VLC. So idk, weird things like that are because it's MPG?

No, I wouldn't convert unless there was a good reason. That's why I asked what the background information was, how it was going to be viewed, what targets. When you re-encode something with a lossy format, you throw away information. In general that is a bad idea.

Certain versions of VLC can be buggy, it's not suprising and not limited to MPG

[CZbwoi]

So something weird is happening in VideoReDo. I dragged the 12 files that are gonna be joined together and the final time in the program says that it is 7:55.16 long, when in actuality it should be 26:24 long. I press play in the program and after the first video ends it fast-forwards like through 2 or 3 videos before stopping, like someone presses a FF button. What?

The program I recorded the screen with exported it as .flv, hope that's okay.

[smrpix]

(Responding to question at top of post #20)

Export like you did in your image in post #9, but unclick the check mark next to the dimensions and change them to 854 and 480.
Then unclick next to the Aspect drop down and change it to square pixels.
Choose stretch to fill instead of scale to fill at the upper right.

The easiest way to make sure your timesline matches your clip is to drag your first clip onto the new item icon at the bottom of the project window.


(edit: 480 was incorrectly typed as 720 originally. Thanks pdr.)

[poisondeathray]

That's very odd - videoredo is usually very stable for mpeg2

You can try one of the other smart renderers, but but there are many ways to append mpeg2, even freeware like mpg2cut2, avidemux, ffmpeg etc...

If there are glitches or problems with every software, that suggests an issue with your source files

[budwzr]

If you can pop for $49 bucks, Sony Movie Studio will easily solve all your troubles, "If" it can read your files. To find out, download the trial.

[CZbwoi]

You can try one of the other smart renderers, but but there are many ways to append mpeg2, even freeware like mpg2cut2

Just used this, weird stuff happening...so the total file size is correct and it's large, 1.2gb. But the file time is 2:36 when in reality it's 26min. I open it up in VLC and scroll through and it's the whole video, yet sort of subtly jumpy when you click through it, but the time still remains the same of 2 minutes and 36 seconds total. I just let it play from the start without doing anything and the time stops at 0:58 even though the bar continues to move along and play. Going into fullscreen is also weird, it goes like in sequences, it doesn't fully fill up the sides at once. It goes like in increments of black borders on the side for a second or two. Also when I use it it changes the color scheme away from Windows 7 which is what I have.

So yeah...a lot of weird things. All I did was insert them and then save the clip as, and then that''s what it gave me, twice. I'll try to see if I can use those other two.

Export like you did in your image in post #9, but unclick the check mark next to the dimensions and change them to 854 and 720.
Then unclick next to the Aspect drop down and change it to square pixels.
Choose stretch to fill instead of scale to fill at the upper right.

Uh...like this? Are you sure?

If you can pop for $49 bucks, Sony Movie Studio will easily solve all your troubles.

Eh...I don't know. But just so we're clear, it's not what the forum automatically linked you to right?