Black borders on exported videos??

Vellora

Hi all.

I've checked out some other posts regarding this issue but they're all quite some years old and didn't really describe my problem.

I'm using VP 4.48 and I'm trying to rotate an MP4 video (480 x 720) 270 degrees and export it as an AVI video (720 x 480). However, there would be black bars somewhere either top and bottom or left and right, or all sides. AND... the quality of the video would also become lower (more blurry). No matter how I played around with the resolutions of the sequence preview and during export, I always ended up with black bars or borders somewhere and a more blurry video, even when both sequence preview and export are 720 x 480.

(Oh... but when I export the video at 720 x 720, video quality stayed the same (no blurry) but there would be black bars at the top and bottom.)

The video compressor I was using was "MPEG4 (Native)", MPEG4 encoding quality 3, and 30 fps with constant frame rate checked.

So what's wrong?! Please advice.

P.S.

An interesting thing to note is that when I examined the Details of the video file (right-click on file in Windows Explorer > Properties > Details tab), Windows Explorer stated that the video's width was 720 and height was 480, even though when I played the file with MPC the width was 480 and height was 720 (but that was before rotation, so I had to turn my head 90 degrees to the right to watch it).

borate

To eliminate the black bars try enlarging the video, using the effects SCALE tool. CROP may also prove useful. A portion of the 720 aspect may be sacrificed.

When exporting, first click the DETECT button, which may improve quality. Nat (Nationalsolo) may drop in here with practical solutions that he has implemented.

Vellora

So far I've only tried 0 and 1 scale. No use.

Crop I've not tried yet, but during export I did select "Crop Edges" on the Aspect Ratio Conflict window. No use.

780? You meant to say 720?

The "Detect..." button is buggy. It'd give a wrong frame rate value sometimes and lead to this problem.

I shot my video with my phone, so I know the video is 30 fps. I'd just select 30 fps.

As for resolution, "Detect..." would set it as 480 x 720, which is wrong because I've rotated the video to become 720 x 480.

[deleted]

Your clip (the whole image) should have an aspect ratio of 16:9 in order to fill the VP screen without any black borders.

If your clip (irrespecive of image orientation) is 480 x 720 (i.e narrow and high) there will be black bars to each side as VP adjusts the clip to fill the height of the frame as here, which is a vertical image of 480 wide by 720 high (as you are wishing to rotate your clip I have to presume yours is orientated horizontally or is horizontal within a vertical frame equivalent to this image)...........

If now the frame (which is the IMAGE in this example...NOT the VP window) is rotated 270 deg using the ROTATE effect, the image remains the SAME SIZE and the result is shown here... (Your image may be now vertical in the centre of this.....

The image has retained the original aspect ratio, but has NOT been enlarged (or reduced) in scale to fit the height or width of the VP screen as happened when it was first added to the timeline.

You now require to add a SCALE effect to make it fill the frame. However, as the aspect ratio is not (in this case) 16:9 you may have to either lose a little of the image ; put up with a small black bar top and bottom or slightly alter the aspect ratio by expanding one side a little more than the other and introducing a slight stretch to the image.

Here is the same clip scaled up to fit the screen.....

Note that a small amount at top and bottom had to be cut off as 480 x 720 is not exactly 16:9 and would otherwise have left black bars.

At the same time SCALE also enlarges the clip and if the resolution is not high or your rotated image was small within your original film the result can appear less clear than the original.

In this example the orientation and size of the IMAGE at the start and hence the end result is obviously not the same as yours but I hope you can see how to proceed.

If you still don't have any joy send an image from the unaltered clip so people can see what you are starting with.

To do this extract an image of the unrotated original clip with VP (Snapshot) and post it to...

https://pictr.com/

After uploading it there - it's free, Copy the Direct user link (https etc.) provided then add it to your forum post by clicking the green image button and Pasting the direct link in the box. The image will then appear in the body of your post.

Nat

Vellora

Hi Nat,

Wow thanks a lot for your detailed post.

I understand what you're trying to tell me, but before I try to play around with it again with what you told me in mind I'd like to seek some clarification from you.

You said my clip "should have an aspect ratio of 16:9 in order to fill the VP screen without any black borders", but what if I've right-clicked on the Sequence Preview window and selected "Changed Preview Resolution..." to change the width and height? Wouldn't that change the 16:9 ratio??

AND... even if their aspect ratios (between my clip and sequence preview) differ, an "Aspect Ratio Conflict" window would pop up when trying to export and I'd select "Crop Edges". But black borders were still there and my clip image seemed to have been shrunk and blurred instead! (Selecting "Resize to Fit" didn't help either.)

What was wrong? Or was I doing things wrongly??

[deleted]

If you change the preview resolution you change the VP preview window. For example if your clip is 16:9 and you change the preview to 4:3 then your clip is then resized to fit into the window but will remain 16:9 and you will have borders on all sides. On export and as there is now a clash .....clip 16:9 in a 4:3 frame you will have the choice of either Cropping the borders or resizing to fit.

Resizing will export the clip as seen in the preview with borders.

Cropping the borders will export the clip as 16:9 and consequently it will fill the screen but if borders or bars were present as part of the original clip they will still be there.

If you Resize to fit on export it will still have borders.

If you choose to Crop edges, the borders of the clip will be trimmed off and the clip enlarged to take up the space. As your image area is "fixed" so to speak in the clip this will also be enlarged with consequent loss of resolution.

However...

What I think you have -- it would be useful if you post an image from the raw clip so people could see it - - is a 16:9 clip with the image 480 x 270 in the centre of it. If this is the case, and its only a guess, it will inherently have borders or bars at each end as a matter of course

This is what I mean...

If this is the case then it is fairly easy to get your full screen image..

Add the clip to the timeline and click FX

Now select ROTATE and enter 270 for the rotation. Remember that the WHOLE frame will rotate with the black borders..NOT just the image section.

The sequence preview result in VP will be this....

There will be a border all around as the WHOLE clip was rotated . (See the example in the above post of my dog.)

Now you need to enlarge the image area...

Click the FX box and select ZOOM

Drag the sides of the box in to exactly outline the image.......

The sequence will now be full frame... As the image in this example is actually 480 x 720 which is not quite 16:9 the edges were dragged in manually, but you could ZOOM to exactly 16:9 by restraing the AR and lose a tiny bit of the frame to ensure the borders have been eliminated. The sequence preview is now a full screen image.........

The downside to this is the Zoom which enlarges the image to cut out the borders but lowers its resolution.....

Any other ideas would be welcome but I hope this helps.

Nat

[deleted]

Alternatively, if you right-click the file in the clip bin (that window to the left of the preview), you should see "Rotate Clip" as an option, which rotates it as it imports into VideoPad, with no loss of quality. This can be used to import a (480x720) video as though it was rotated to (720x480). You would then simply need to export the video at 720x480.

[deleted]

If the clip was full frame 480 x 720 (not quite 16:9) and just oirientated vertically with the subject matter sideways on, that step would obviate Rotating the clip with effects and it would export OK after custom resize but crop borders would still appear. I forgot about the option to rotate directly from the clip bin. Thanks for the reminder :-))

However, I am probably wrong but I got the impression that the clip had a vertical image within the frame like the top image in my post above.

Nat

Vellora

Nat,

I found the method you described (especially the Zoom function) too...... manual and thus imprecise (at reaching exactly 720 x 480). It worked, but there was some loss of image clarity (which is absolutely unacceptable to me).

One thing I don't understand is that even when my sequence preview's resolution is set to 720 x 480 and I'm exporting at 720 x 480 also (after doing the 270-degree rotation), black bars existed at ALL 4 sides and my video's image clarity was reduced. I don't understand at all.

And I also don't understand why when I exported at 720 x 720 (after rotation), there was NO loss of image clarity even though black bars appear at top and bottom only. Why?!

But yes... The method NotADevWinkWink suggested worked perfectly without any problem or hassle, very straightforward and simple and everything was in order.

Vellora

NotADevWinkWink wrote:

Alternatively, if you right-click the file in the clip bin (that window to the left of the preview), you should see "Rotate Clip" as an option, which rotates it as it imports into VideoPad, with no loss of quality. This can be used to import a (480x720) video as though it was rotated to (720x480). You would then simply need to export the video at 720x480.

Thanks NotADevWinkWink. This worked very nicely. I wasn't even aware of that option in the right-click menu.

dbradionow

[deleted]

Hi dbradionow

"I have image comparisons, but do not know how to add here??"

To do this, extract an image (or images) from the clip with the VP Snapshot and save to the PC.

Open the following web site and upload an image ......

https://pictr.com/

After uploading it there - (it's free), Copy the Direct user link (https etc.) provided after it's uploaded and then, back on the forum post page, click the small green image icon on the toolbar (Its under the Smiley)

This will open a URL box. Paste the direct link into the box. The image will then appear in the body of your post at the cursor position.

Nat