Widescreen (2:35:1 style) in Premiere Pro CS5.5

Question

What's the best way to achieve this?
Cropping, rendering it out in 2:25:1 or using overlay images that are exactly the ratio that you need?
I'm still new to Premiere Pro (switched from Sony vegas, lord premiere is so much better and easier!)
Cheers for your answers
Maciej Kaliski

Answer 1

If you're going out to disk (DVD or Blu-ray), you need to fill the frame.  That means using the Crop effect inside of Premiere Pro so that the black bars are part of the image.
If you're going out to a file for computer playback, then you can do the above, or you can Crop it during the export phase, which cuts out the black bars and leaves only the viewable image.
Here's the formula:
1. Take the aspect ratio of the footage you have, say 4:3 or 16:9, and do the math. [4 / 3 = 1.333;  16 / 9 = 1.777; etc.]
2. Divide that by the aspect ratio you want (many people still call it 2.35, but since the early 70's the standard has actually been 2.39).  [1.777 / 2.39 = .7438]
3. Multiply that result by 100.  [.7438 x 100 = 74.38]
4. You need to see 74.38% of the image to get the desired ratio.  The corollary is that you need to crop 25.6% of the image, or 12.8% from top and bottom.