Probably better to attach a short clip of the actual phone footage with th issue. Initial guess, it might not be true 16:9 aspect ratio or just footage PD can't handle. Reposition or scale up slightly (zoom in) may eliminate your black bar.

Jeff

Attached is some raw footage directly from Dualgram. The app records three separate files -- front, back, and composite of both. Again, I don't see the black line at the top in this, just the exported video from PD.

Quote Probably better to attach a short clip of the actual phone footage with th issue. Initial guess, it might not be true 16:9 aspect ratio or just footage PD can't handle. Reposition or scale up slightly (zoom in) may eliminate your black bar.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff -- I tried zooming in a little with the attached clip (above post) and it still has the black bar at the top. Must be something to do with the format generated from the Dualgram app I guess.

Quote Thanks Jeff -- I tried zooming in a little with the attached clip (above post) and it still has the black bar at the top. Must be something to do with the format generated from the Dualgram app I guess.

You can see in the attached PD21 preview window that the black bar is there. Zoom in on attached pic, there is a gap between the top of the video and the white frame. Or look at the gap from the white dots in corner and mid and the video.

This might be occurring because of the rotation flag in the video,
Display aspect ratio : 0.562
Rotation : 270°

you can view that with MediaInfo.

Two possibilities:
1) Scale the video slightly and the bar will disappear in preview and produce. You will lose a slight edge around the recorded video
2) Process with like HandBrake, it handles the rotation flag and scale without issue. Use this file in PD21 and preview and produce with no black bar issue.

Both these options worked fine for me.

If the video truly is 15-30fps as indicated by MediaInfo, this can often cause other issues in PD21, conversion via HandBrake or similar to fixed fps will often remedy.

Jeff

Thanks again for looking into it! This is what's throwing me off -- I don't see the black bar when I initially import the media into PD, only after rendering.

When you say "zoom in" you mean open it in PiP Designer and do it from there? Also I'll look into Handbrake as you suggested.

Quote Thanks again for looking into it! This is what's throwing me off -- I don't see the black bar when I initially import the media into PD, only after rendering.

When you say "zoom in" you mean open it in PiP Designer and do it from there? Also I'll look into Handbrake as you suggested.

Turn off the shadow files (pref > General > "Shadow file.....") and then add the clip to the timeline and view your raw video in the timeline vs the shadow files, you will see the gap. It's better to click on video in the timeline so you get the frame borders, you will easily see it.

Jeff

Quote
Turn off the shadow files (pref > General > "Shadow file.....") and then add the clip to the timeline and view your raw video in the timeline vs the shadow files, you will see the gap. It's better to click on video in the timeline so you get the frame borders, you will easily see it.

Ah! Yes, I see it in the preview window immediately without rendering when "shadow files" is turned off. Thanks!

As a side note, do you normally leave that option turned off? Is that the only purpose for it -- to speed up previewing with a sacrifice in quality?

Quote Ah! Yes, I see it in the preview window immediately without rendering when "shadow files" is turned off. Thanks!

As a side note, do you normally leave that option turned off? Is that the only purpose for it -- to speed up previewing with a sacrifice in quality?

It depends how fast of a system you have, source video specs, and how fluid you like the timeline to playback. PD has very poor timeline playback fluidity vs other products so they have lots of crutches to assist, shadow files, non-real time, YUV/RGB, Render Preview, hardware decoding, Preview Quality, ... to name a few.

I typically don't use shadow files on my higher end system, nice concept, however poor implementation and corrective/debug actions have caused way too many issues over the years for me. But, if you want the most fluid timeline playback to edit, they do help there with PD.

Jeff

Quote

It depends how fast of a system you have, source video specs, and how fluid you like the timeline to playback. PD has very poor timeline playback fluidity vs other products so they have lots of crutches to assist, shadow files, non-real time, YUV/RGB, Render Preview, hardware decoding, Preview Quality, ... to name a few.

I typically don't use shadow files on my higher end system, nice concept, however poor implementation and corrective/debug actions have caused way too many issues over the years for me. But, if you want the most fluid timeline playback to edit, they do help there with PD.

Jeff

Thanks -- I'll work with shadow files off for a bit and see if I have any issues. Since that feature was apprarently somehow masking the problem with the black bars, I'm kinda turned off by it now.

I don't know if my system would be considered higher end... certainly better than what I've used in the past, though.

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz (6 cores)
32 GB DDR4 RAM
NVIDIA Geforce RTX 2060 6GB
SSD SATA M.2 2242 WD 500GB main drive for OS
WD Blue SA510 1TB drive for media/projects

Quote Thanks -- I'll work with shadow files off for a bit and see if I have any issues. Since that feature was apprarently somehow masking the problem with the black bars, I'm kinda turned off by it now.

I don't know if my system would be considered higher end... certainly better than what I've used in the past, though.

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz (6 cores)
32 GB DDR4 RAM
NVIDIA Geforce RTX 2060 6GB
SSD SATA M.2 2242 WD 500GB main drive for OS
WD Blue SA510 1TB drive for media/projects

Your video that you shared was very basic, 1920x1080, 7800kbps overall avg bitrate, that's really nothing compared to what's typically edited today. So, depending how you have your graphics setup in your laptop, your i7-9750H and UHD Graphics 630 should handle timeline display with little issue with that source. Try without shadow files and see how you get by.

Really just a par system CPU wise, review at like https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-9750H+%40+2.60GHz&id=3425 . Since a laptop, and potentially both GPU's active depending on user/OEM settings available, PD will really only use the RTX 2060 for encoding during produce when user configured. It will really do nothing for timeline display as that would be handled by the UHD 630, rather different functionality than implying same RTX 2060 as this guy's desktop, https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/119126.page#post_box_448675.

Jeff

Quote Your video that you shared was very basic, 1920x1080, 7800kbps overall avg bitrate, that's really nothing compared to what's typically edited today. So, depending how you have your graphics setup in your laptop, your i7-9750H and UHD Graphics 630 should handle timeline display with little issue with that source. Try without shadow files and see how you get by.

The 1080p video is a limitation of using the Dualgram app on my iPhone, recording with the front and rear cameras at the same time and simultaneously saving it as 3 separate files -- front camera, rear camera, and the composite of both with the picture in picture. When I'm not using that, it typically records at 3840x2160 17504kbps bitrate, and 24 FPS because that's the framerate I chose to work with. My GoPro footage is at 2704x1520 at around 45000kbps bitrate, 24 FPS. Putting them all together results in a video at 1080p on YouTube unless I wanted to try doing some upscaling on the 1080p scenes recorded with Dualgram. Back when I was editing everything on the phone using iMovie and having to upload using a slow internet connection, it seemed the way to go. Also, the thinking was that I'd be editing video while on trail and uploading them as I go along on very long hikes.

Anyway, so far no issues editing with shadow files turned off, and I regret not having understood that in the beginning because it caused me to miss the black bars.

Really just a par system CPU wise, review at like https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-9750H+%40+2.60GHz&id=3425 . Since a laptop, and potentially both GPU's active depending on user/OEM settings available, PD will really only use the RTX 2060 for encoding during produce when user configured. It will really do nothing for timeline display as that would be handled by the UHD 630, rather different functionality than implying same RTX 2060 as this guy's desktop, https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/119126.page#post_box_448675.

Thanks for the info Jeff -- in that post I'm only trying to equate that we both have a 2060 in case it meant anything regarding the halting during startup (probably irrelevant).

I don't know if the laptop uses the integrated graphics as well as the 2060. In the device manager I only see drivers for the 2060. At the time I bought this laptop, a PCIe desktop 2060 card was nearly unobtainable by itself and the price was about as much as I paid for the laptop!



Currently I'm trying to decide if I fix the black bar issues with Handbrake, convert the files from the mp4 that Handbrake exports to back to MOV using something like VLC, and replace the files in the PD project's media library with the exact same name -- hopefully saving me from re-editing all those sections. Would that even work, or create a rift in the space time continuum?

Quote I don't know if the laptop uses the integrated graphics as well as the 2060. In the device manager I only see drivers for the 2060. At the time I bought this laptop, a PCIe desktop 2060 card was nearly unobtainable by itself and the price was about as much as I paid for the laptop!

Possible, it really depends how the laptop is configured, hence my "depending on user/OEM settings" comment prior. Most common on many laptops, the iGPU cannot be disabled, some higher end laptop units provide additional circuitry on the MB to control. With those, a setting in BIOS about graphics typically controls behavior. I attached a BIOS pic from an old Dell M6800 I had that could disable the iGPU while a similar vintage Dell XPS15 has no option to disable.

Quote Currently I'm trying to decide if I fix the black bar issues with Handbrake, convert the files from the mp4 that Handbrake exports to back to MOV using something like VLC, and replace the files in the PD project's media library with the exact same name -- hopefully saving me from re-editing all those sections. Would that even work, or create a rift in the space time continuum?

For a current project, I'd probably just scale these clips, need maybe 1.5% is all, very easy to do in PD21. Going fwd, maybe a different approach. MOV, MP4, they are just containers, detailed video codec and specifics could be the same in both.

FPS is really user desire, if 24 fps works for you, then stick with it. For what I shoot, I couldn't live with it, way too slow. Just keep in mind, virtually every phone does not record in 24fps, 30fps,... even when that's the setting. Unless you use a specific video app like Filmic Pro or the like. Phones use a highly variable fps to conserve resources, this can and often does cause issue in PD if the variability is large. How variable in a recording really depends on what one is shooting and how consistent the motion is during that record session duration. The problem with this is one clip may have no issue in PD, while another clip might. I've spent way too many hours chasing this so I often convert to just basic old school constant fps and this remedies the issues.

Jeff