changing the pixel dimensions of a sequence from 4k to 1080

[Michael Grenadier]

So I'm cutting a music video that was shot with 3 4k cameras.  I intially was editing it as a 4k sequence but realized that our distribution will be 1080 and want to change the pixel dimensions of the sequence.  I know I can just change the pixel dimensions in thte sequence settings or copy and paste the contents of the 4k sequence in to a 1080 sequence, but wondering if there's a simple way to do this and preserve my scaling, repositions and animation.  Since it's only about 4 minutes long, not a big deal to manually match, but hoping for a shortcut...

[ah.photo]

For what it's worth, if the change in resolution is ONLY for your deliverable export: I would just suggest you keep your sequence setting as is, and then just set your export resolution to 1080p. You can even use the export setting "Use Maximum Render Quality" to improve the scaling quality when downscaling in that manner. Besides, this way down the road if you ever want to keep a 2160p archive for any reason, you have it.

If you need to rescale the sequence because you need to crop in on some shots and not lose as much quality. Well, you could duplicate your sequence and change the resolution of your copy. Premiere will attempt to preserve scaling as much as possible (as long as you've ticked that box in the sequence settings window). However, if you ever run into some complex issues with scaling, you could always refer back to your original, untouched sequence.

[ah.photo]

I should clarify:

I erronously assumed UHD for when you wrote"4K". If you're truly using 4K 1.9:1 footage, you would have a different aspect ratio going down to 16:9. You still could export at 1080p if you want, and use the export window crop options to crop to a 16:9 frame, to ensure your 1080p export doesn't have any letterboxing. You'd just lose a small amount on the left and right edge.

[Michael Grenadier]

thanks.  of course, one of the cameras IS 4k, and the other 2 are UHD...  and yeah, I understand about slightly scaling up the 4k material to eliminate the slight letterboxing...  And yeah, I need to adjust the scaling to maintain maximum quality.  Probably should have just edited in a 1080 timeline, but with the complication of multicamera, etc.  I didn't...  lesson learned.     So there doesn't seem to be an automatic way to do this, I just divide the scaling in 1/2 in the 1080 sequence and (with a 1080 output on a higher video track with 50% opacity, match the position and animation.  working ok so far...

[ah.photo]

Premiere should have done this for you. Did you check the "Scale motion effects proportionally when changing frame size" checkbox in sequence settings prior to changing the frame size? When checked, any resolution changes would have Premiere calculate the new scale parameters for you. For complicated moves and keyframes it may not translate 1:1, but for everything else it should be fine.

Of course nothing wrong with it doing the way you are doing it, of manually inputting the new scale values... but I'd imagine that's quite a pain!

As mentioned, you also could just leave your 4K sequence as is and export as 1080p and do an "on export crop" from the export settings window to 16:9.

Best of luck either way!

[Michael Grenadier]

tried it with and without the "scale motion effects" button checked and unchecked.  Neither way worked.  Could be operator error (wouldn't be the first time).  But took about an hour to do a very complex 4 minute sequence.  And need to maintain whatever quality exists on the camera original when scaled and repositioned so just exporting as 1080 was not an option...  

3 streams of 4K camera original multicamera (a few flavors of h264 material) with propres proxy 1080 proxies was straining my system, so staying 4k with proxies on, seemed to give me better playback than working in a 1080 sequence.    But probably should have tested my workflow more thorougly before I started editing, but both the client and I were anxious to get started cutting.   

Thanks for your help

Michael

[Andy 1968]

You don't have to create a 4K sequence, 1080P sequence and DVD 720 X 480 Sequence. Simply create the 4K sequence. You can change the resolution and even the aspect ration at export. You can skip forward to the two minute mark of the video below to see how it can be done.