Premiere crops 4:3 video when importing into 16:9 timeline

[Guy Burns]

I've had a Super 8 film scanned at:

• 2048 x 1556 (4:3)

• ProsRes 4444

• 18 fps.

When I view the video in the Source window, it is correctly shown. I want the video to appear inside a 16:9 timeline, 23.976 fps. So what I do is interpret the video to be 23.976, square pixels.

When I drag the video into the 16:9 timeline, Premiere asks me if I want to keep settings or change them, and I select Keep Settings. Premiere imports the video into the timeline – but crops it to 16:9 so that the top and bottom are lost.

I've experienced this problem before – but only with 4:3 sources.

How do I tell Premiere to stop cropping my 4:3 video when it goes into a 16:9 timeline?

[tuckerwagner · Accepted solution]

Try using scale option in the effect controls panel and bringing it down. You can also try right clicking the clip and selecting "Scale to Frame Size."

[Meg The Dog]

What are the pixel dimensions of the Sequence? If the sequence is smaller than the source frame size, go to Preferences > Media > Default Media Scaling and set it to Set to Frame Size:

Premiere will then scale the image so that the lesser pixel dimension of the source fits within the lesser pixel dimension of the timeline.

MtD

[Guy Burns]

I'm running CS6.

Thanks for the solutions. Silly me! I should have realised the answer, as I regularly use stills larger than 1920 x 1080 and have to scale them down, but only rarely do I some across videos larger than HD. The scan was larger than the timeline so Premiere was showing just the central 1920 x 1080 portion.

What threw me was the when I changed the Fit scale in the Program window, the initial crop persisted. So when I went down to 10%, Premiere was still cropping the image. I see now, that that is what should happen.

Thanks for correcting my misunderstanding.