In today’s DVD market, movies are usually released in two formats, Widescreen or Fullscreen. Widescreen is perfect for watching on an HD television with an aspect ratio of 16 x 9. However if you watch a widescreen DVD on a Standard Definition television with a 4x3 aspect ratio, the video is letterboxed and you can see black bars on the top and bottom. This is fine if you have a large enough television because you can still see the full image as it was visualized by the filmmakers, but on smaller T.V. sets it makes the picture seem smaller.  That’s where the Fullscreen version comes in.

The name ‘fullscreen’ is a bit misleading because you’re not really seeing the full width of the original film but you are seeing a full image on your 4 x 3 T.V. screen. With fullscreen DVDs the original movie is zoomed in so that there are no black borders on the top and bottom, but the left and right sides of the film are cropped off. Sometimes a film will contain important visual information in one of these cropped areas.  For years distributors have customized their DVD’s (and Tapes) using a technique called Pan and Scan to frame the original widescreen image into a fullscreen window.

Scanning refers to selecting a specific 4 x 3 region of your original widescreen film and using that area as the full screen image. Panning is used when a scene has visual information on both the left and right sides of the original film. The 4 x 3 region will start on one side and then pan to the other to reveal the other side. For more in formation about Pan and Scan see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_and_scan.

Preparing your Project

The first step in making a pan and scan version of an HD film or video is to load your existing HD project. Let’s assume that your entire movie has been edited in a single Premiere Pro Sequence (timeline).  Make a duplicate of that sequence so we can customize the new copy using the Pan and Scan effect without altering the original.

1. Right-Click on the original sequence in the Project Panel.
2. Select Duplicate from the context menu.
3. Rename the new sequence ‘Pan and Scan’ or something like that.
4. Double click on the new sequence to make it active in the Timeline Panel.

Setting up your Guides

Next we’ll need to customize the Program Monitor’s Title Safe and Action Safe areas. The Action Safe area will act as a 4x3 guide to let us know how far left or right we can pan or scan.

1. Browse to the following Menu: Project > Project Settings > General.
2. Set the Title Safe Area to 0% horizontal and 0% vertical.
3. Set the Action Safe Area to 24% horizontal and 0% vertical.
4. Click ‘OK’.

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Make sure you’ve enabled the ‘Safe Margins’ option in your Program Monitor.

Now you can use the Action Safe Margins as a guide for how far you can pan or scan left and right.

Applying a Scan Effect

Select a clip in the timeline that needs to be scanned.

The clip in this demonstration includes a female subject, whose head is in the far left region of the 16 x 9 window. Without scanning, a 4 x 3 export would usually crop off the sides leaving some of her head out of the frame. I’d rather see a little bit more of her head so I’m going to shift this clip to the right.

In Premiere’s Effects Controls Panel, adjust the Position settings by either typing in a new value or click and drag to the right. As you drag, the image in the program monitor will move to the right.

Original	Scanned

The original clip is now scanned to the right and the subject is now framed in the middle of the guides so we’re not cutting off as much of her head. Notice that I didn’t go as far as I could have gone. I wanted to leave her some look-space. Use your own judgment when framing your shots. But as you can see from the above screen captures, this gives us a more aesthetic 4 x 3 shot.

Applying a Pan Effect

Now select a clip in the timeline that needs to be panned.

Place the CTI at the frame you want the pan to start (in this case at the first frame of the clip).

In Premiere’s Effect Controls panel click on the stopwatch. This will enable keyframing and add a keyframe to the current timeline position.

Frame the video in program monitor to where it should be at the start of the pan by either adjusting the Position settings in the Effect Controls panel or by clicking on the clip itself in the Program Monitor and dragging it left or right. If you choose the latter method, be sure not to move it up or down. Just go to the left or right.

In this example, I want to start on the flowers and pan right to the woman on the chair.

Now move the CTI to where you want the pan to end.

Move the position of the clip to where you would like it framed at the end of the pan.

If you look in the Effect Controls panel, you will notice that a position keyframe has been added.

To make the pan smoother, right click on the first keyframe and select ‘Ease Out’ from the Temporal Interpolation context menu.

Then click on the last key frame and select ‘Ease In’ from the Temporal Interpolation context menu.

You will need to render this portion of your timeline, but it will provide you with a smooth pan effect.

Once you’ve got all the keyframes in place for all of your clips, export the movie. Use CineForm HD Export as the File Type. In the Compile Settings, select HD Optimized and for the Compressor select CineForm NTSC Crop 16:9 to 4:3. Ignore the fact that it says the frame size is 960 h x 486 v. Just change the Pixel Aspect Ratio to D1/DV NTSC (0.9). Then click OK and name your file and click OK again. That should give you an SD panned and scanned version of your movie.

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