[King Mustard]

I have some footage recorded in 16:9 by my digital video camera.

I have set the Premiere Pro CS4 project settings to DV PAL Widescreen and when editing, everything previews in widescreen (within the 'source' and 'program' tiles) correctly.

When I choose to export the footage however, I select 16:9 but the outputted video is always in 4:3.

One thing I've noticed is that whenever Premiere Pro mentions 'widescreen', it always shows '720x576' next to it, which is 4:3, not 16:9.

Any ideas?

[bsuttie]

Originally Posted by King Mustard

One thing I've noticed is that whenever Premiere Pro mentions 'widescreen', it always shows '720x576' next to it, which is 4:3, not 16:9.

If you divide 720 by 576 you actually get 1.25 which is 5:4, not 4:3.
Actually both 4:3 and 16:9 are 720 x 576, it's just that different pixel aspect ratios (PARs) should be used on playback.

4:3 uses a pixel aspect which is slightly wider than square (by a factor of 1.09) and 16:9 is even wider than that.

If you're creating videos for playback on a computer in a program that doesn't understand pixel aspect ratios, then you need to increase the width. But for TV leave it at 720 x 576. If for example you're creating a DVD then the DVD should be flagged as 16:9 widescreen and this will show correctly on playback.

regards

Brian