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Question

Crop/Scale in Premiere Versus Adobe Media Encoder: What's the Difference?

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
December 6, 2022
2 replies
6529 views

Hello,
I'd like to know the difference between cropping and scaling a video clip directly on a Premiere Pro timeline, versus doing so in the Adobe Media Encoder export window?

I am converting DVDs of VHS source material to H.264 files and want remove the distortion at the bottom (head tearing), and on the sides. I scaled each clip up 104%, which successfully cleaned up the bottom and sides before sending the project to Adobe Media Encoder for export.

The 'Source' tab in Adobe Media Encoder has several options for cropping, while the 'Output' tab's 'Scale to Fill' seems to do the same thing as scaling in Premiere.

Is there a fundamental difference between doing these operations in a Premiere project versus doing them in Adobe Media Encoder?

Thank you,
Eric

This topic has been closed for replies.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Drop the 720-by-480 non-square pixel source into a 640-by-480 square pixel Sequence in Premiere Pro and then scale to about 104% to do what's called "crop for overscan" and then send that to Media Encoder to create H264 MP4s. Use the Match Source - High Bitrate preset.

Or,

Drop 720-by-480 non-square pixel source into a 1280-by-720 square pixel Composition in After Effects and then apply Detail-preserving Upscale Effect. Use the "Scale to Comp Height" button for this Effect and then increase the Scale percentage until the skew is cropped and then send that to Media Ecnoder to create H264 MP4s. se the Match Source - High Bitrate preset.

Eric HoltzAuthor

Known Participant

Thank you Warren,

Unfortunately, all of the sequences are already completed with edits, adjustment layers, remastered audio tracks, and video noise reduction applied, so I'm pretty much locked into the native 720x480, 4:3, non-square pixels sequences. That said, what resolution and aspect ratio can I use for exporting the completed sequences? I've done some test exports, upscaling to 1280x720, 16:9 and they look pretty good. I have read comments that baking in the pillarboxes for 4:3 to 16:9 conversion is not recommended. Why is that? Whether I export 4:3 or 16:9, there will still be black bars on the sides when played in fullscreen mode in Windows Media Player, VLC, etc.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

You can conform to 640-by-480 square pixel before editing or after editing. Or you can conform to 1280-by-720 square pixel before editing or after editing.

Pillarboxing is only important if you want to control how the original 4-by-3 frame aspect ratio appears within 16-by-9.

Upconverting to 960-by-720 or 1440-by-1080 instead of 1280-by-720 is a fine way to go and probably better if the movie might be played in a free-floating window instead of full screen.

It's extra work, but you could upconvert a "_full" version (full frame 4x3) and a "_wide' version (widescreen 16x9). So, if your edited 720-by-480 movie file is named "family_wedding_dv.mov", you could create a 960-by-540 version and name it "family_wedding_full.mov" and another 1280-by-720 version named "family_weeding_wide.mov".

We see this with DVD-Video where there's a full frame version and a widescreen version. Sometimes they're separate DVD-Video discs sold separately and other times it's a 2-sided DVD-Video disc with full screen on one side and widescreen on the other.

S

Sven S

Community Manager

Hello Eric,

both are valid possibilites. If you want a quick transformation or prepare your ingest data quickly AME with Crop and Scale automatically to your desired output size is the best choise. If you need some additional work or effects on it or require some async scaling or free transformation of the source Premiere is the better choise.
If you want do multiple batch processing, e.g. covert a lot DV Tapes, DVD, VHS into another format, I would definitive build your custom preset, including the crop and scale option, and us this every time. Normally your input has the same black bars and that should work. If the black bars changes you need to redefine your crop by hand.
Hope that helps,
SvenS

Eric HoltzAuthor

Known Participant

Thank you SvenS,

Will the video be adversely affected by the scaling, whether done in Premiere or in AME, since I will be converting from 720x480, 4:3, NTSC non-square pixels to square pixels with a yet to be decided aspect ratio and resolution? It has been recommended for me to use 720x534 as the exported resolution.

Side note: Is there a big quality difference between exporting as a 4:3 SD file and upscaling the export to something such as 16:9, 1280x720 HD? The only difference I've noticed on past exports is the pillarboxing on 720p files, which is present anyway when viewing 4:3 in a player using fullscreen mode. Am I close to being correct?

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