Premiere is not rendering my stretched clips correctly

[unknownsailor]

I have some 2K clips recorded on the GoPro. Unfortunately, I did not turn off the horizontal/vertical switch so when I recorded my clip it recorded it at 90 degrees. When brought into a 1080 timeline in Premiere it initially looks something like this:

The properties of the clip are this:

Type: MPEG Movie
File Size: 543.94 MB
Image Size: 2704 x 1520
Frame Rate: 59.94
Source Audio Format: 48000 Hz - compressed - Stereo
Project Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - Stereo
Total Duration: 00:01:15:35
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0 (1.0)
Alpha: None
Video Codec Type: MP4/MOV H.264 4:2:0 (Full Range)

I then apply scale height, scale width and rotation to get it to look correct...

To make sure everything is ok I then nest the clip. When it plays back in the timeline it plays back with the correct settings.....

After rendering the whole sequence, however, that clip plays like this.....

... so whilst it has correctly rotated the clip 90 degrees, it has squished the clip and zoomed in. Why is this? How is it that Premiere cannot render this clip properly? Should I be using a different method?

Any help appreciated, thanks.

[John V Knowles]

Check your sequence settings and make sure your Preview frame size matches your sequence frame size. 

WM

[unknownsailor]

Hi WM,

It does. The sequence is a standard 1080 timeline and the preview defaults to it. But that's not the problem. When previewing, this plays correctly. It is only after rendering that it does something odd to that clip.

[John V Knowles]

We need to clarify what you mean by "render" -- are you generating previews of your media in the timeline, or outputting a file? (Lots of folks use render as a term for the latter which is what After Effects calls it, but to a lot of NLE editors 'render' means the former.)

If you are saying that it does not output correctly despite looking okay in the sequence, then I recommend one of the following steps:

1. Set the sequence Preview codec to a good Mastering codec – ProRes 422 HQ, Cineform, DNxHD – and render previews for the entire timeline. If those clips look okay after previewing them, export your timeline and click "Match Sequence Settings" and "Use Previews." That will create a file that matches the sequenc preview codec and matches the last preview state (since it won't reference the original media). You can then drop this into Media Encoder to make compressed versions if needed.
2. Or: do what @WeAreMoose suggests and "Render and Replace" just those clips. That may be the easier task if there are not a lot of them; essentially you're creating new Master clips that are the correct rotation and aspect ratio, and you never have to deal with the incorrect raw footage again.

HTH.

WM

[unknownsailor]

[WeAreMoose]

Is your Pixel Aspect Ratio set to anamorphic perhaps?

That way it may be displayed as 16/9 but rendered as a 4/3 basically.

If that didn't help at all, I'd just 'Render and Replace' the clips inside the Nests:

Right Click

Render and Replace

Quicktime / Cineform 10bit

---

That way it deactivates all motion fx and renders it into a straight video file.

[unknownsailor]

Pixel aspect ratio is correct. I didn't think about rendering and replacing individual clips but I wonder if that would have resulted in the same thing.

In the end I used GoPro's Quick desktop app to import the clip and then save it again once it had automatically changed the dimensions of the file.