-
HD Video Won’t Scale to SD TV
Hi,
I have an HD project (1920 x 1080) and when I export it to dvd from Encore and play it back on a standard def television, it is not scaling to fit the screen. You see a zoomed in version.
How do I correct this problem? If I scale it down to 720×480, then it won’t play full screen on an HD television.
I’m up against the wall and have a close deadline! Thanks for your time and help.
Jeremy
-
3 Replies
-
Are you trying to make an SD DVD or a Blu-ray disc? If DVD, then 720×480 is the only choice you have, because that’s the DVD frame size. If it’s 720×480 widescreen (1.21 PAR), then an HDTV will upscale the image to fit the full HDTV frame, and an SD TV will show the frame letterboxed.
All of the above depends on the particular DVD player being set up correctly.
-Jeff
The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0
-
Thanks for your advice.
Do you have any experience with DVD players not being setup correctly to handle the 720×480 widescreen (1.21 PAR)? I’m just wondering if I should play it safe and go with 720×480 if alot of the DVD players won’t scale it properly. Do you have a wild guess of how many DVD players in 100 would not scale the widescreen version properly? What would you do?
Thanks again,
Jeremy
-
*Every* hardware DVD player will scale it correctly if the owner of the player has set it up to match the type of TV they’re using. How many DVD player owners have it set up correctly? I don’t know – how many VCR owners still have the blinking “12:00” showing on the display? 🙂
You also have to deal with HDTV owners viewing properly-scaled 4:3 video content improperly distorted because they’ve set the display aspect ratio of their TV wrong. You have absolutely no control over the audience’s DVD player set-up and their TV PAR settings.
As I said: for standard def DVD there is only one frame size choice for NTSC and that is 720×480. Whether that footage has a PAR of 0.9 (standard 4:3) or 1.2 (widescreen 16:9) depends on your source footage and how you export it from your editing program. These days, with all new TVs on store shelves being 16:9 HDTVs, personally I’d edit my 4:3 SD footage in a 16:9 SD sequence so that it was permanently pillar-boxed and couldn’t be stretched by the audience choosing the wrong PAR on the TV. Reference the Star Trek Original Series BD episodes; that’s what Paramount did.
-Jeff
The Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Encore DVD 2.0
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up