I know this has been discussed numerous times, but I am dense.
My client likes the 16:9 format. I sent them one movie as a preview already that my video guy did as 720x480, which he called “standard 16:9”. (It was basically a pan and zoom of 1280x720 stills that I rendered.
At this point, I don’t want to lock myself (or my client) into HDDVD, Bluray, Xbox, or hard disk players. Maybe good options, but not the best fit presently.
So… what is the best output I can do with these constraints?
I guess I’m asking a few questions really. 1 - What size do I render?
(I’ve read about: 1280x720 @ 1.0 aspect, 720x486 @ 1.2, 720x576 @ 1.422, 1024x576 @ 1.0, … my head is spinning)
2 - What do I need to deal with on the production side?
(Anamorphic/square, progressive/interlaced, etc…???)
Well the best would be to render FullHD. You can still letterbox/pan&scan/resize etc later. Dont go interlaced, just creates a lot of hassle with no real advantage.
Full HD would 1920x1080 progressive at pixelaspect 1.
If you want to render small HD you can also do 1280x720
standard dvd’s can only use 720x480 (4:3 and 16:9). i usually render at 16:9 PAR of 1.0 in max then my last stage in the process before going to dvd is to then squeeze it down
hehe sorry. basically i like the aspect ratio of 2.35:1 but DVD needs it to be 16:9 so i take the usual HD ratio (16:9) plug in the 480 height to find out the width which is 853 then plug that into width of the 2.35:1 getting a height of 363. thats what i render at. 853x363 square pixels. in AE i work on a 853x480 frame size which will give me a little letterboxing then when i compress to mpeg2 in tmpgenc is when i convert to the 720x480 16:9 aspect ratio. i also animate now at 24p and let tmpgenc do all the conversions (since i work in ntsc region)
We render for DVD at 854x480 with a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio out of Vray, it can then be squeezed to 720x480 with a 1.2:1 pixel aspect ratio for anamorphic DVD encoding. This gives you a little more vertical resolution and the DVD player will automatically “unsqueeze” the image by adding the black bars back when it is played as long as the encoder flags it properly as anamorphic content. This is basically the same way film is encoded to DVD.
It is basically the same technique as da_Elf but we do the 1:1 → 1.2:1 conversion in AE and feed TMGEnc 720x480 anamorphic footage.
If you render at 1280x720, it could be resized to 854x480 and the above technique could be used.
I agree with Da_elf. Keep it square pixel until the end it could save many head aches with post production.
I have ony done 1 widescreen project (not HD), I rendered at 1024x576 then out-putted this from Premier in mpeg2 at 720x576 which gives you the pixel aspect ration of 1.422. I’m in a PAL region of course. I think after many weeks confusion this is a good workflow.
I suggest going anamorphic (that means changing the pixel aspect ratio). I’ve done several 3D commercial projects and an entire short film in anamorphic (shooting with anamorphic lenses and ending with an anamorphic DVD) and it looks great. The advantage of this method is you get a 16:9 image WITHOUT rendering anything else that u would render in a regular NTSC project, which reduces rendertimes.
You shouldnt mess with HD at all, its just a waste of resources.
As some others said, as long as u flag the video as Widescreen in your DVD authoring, the dvd player should take care of it properly.
To create NTSC 16:9 Anamorphic in 3Dsmax/Vray:
- Set your image size to 720x486
- Lock your image aspect ratio so it cannot be changed
- Change the pixel aspect ratio to 1.200
- At the end, your image aspect should read : 1.7778. Thats the sign u are looking for…it means everything is ok.
Your render will look squashed, but thats ok. You just need to work that way without altering the image (although u can display the right pixel aspect ratio in many applications like photshop just introducing it on the “correct aspect ratio” options),
Finally, in the DVD authoring app, tell it your video is Widescreen. Then your image will be displayed correctly either in LCD flat planels or regular CRT monitors.
I’ll add one more “simple” technique that makes everything very easy. If working in After Effects, do all of your compositing at 854x480 with square pixels. Everything looks normal, no distortion, etc. When everything finished, create a new comp that is 720x480 with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.2 (widescreen). Nest the original 854x480 comp into the new one and voila, everything is set to go anamorphic. Use the original 854x480 for writing out quicktimes or whatever and the 720x480 comp to go to DVD for encoding.
I would agree not to render at 1080p (HD) unless it is going on TV as a HD animation. For DVD its just going to take you forever to render without much quality increase.
For DVD’s i would do as Panthon said but the PAL version of it (from memory i think we use 720x576 @ 1.422). The frames come out looking squished but when you play the DVD back on a player, it gets corrected back to the proper proportions. I’ve found with this way of working, the end result looks like it was a higher resolution rendering but also plays back very smoothly - smoother than if you just spit out frames with an aspect ratio of 1.0 in my experiences anyway
