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Question about format when distributing a DVD to our high school’s seniors
What format/aspect ratio/rate would you recommend for FCPX’s project settings when creating a DVD that will be given to all graduating seniors at our kid’s HS? (Largely middle to lower-income demographic in a small town, no Walmart but 3 Redboxes.)
The content is all scanned photos.
To learn a little about FCPX I did some practice clips and got accustomed to the quality of 1080p. A similar test using NTSC SD as the setting showed quite a drop in quality in the editor itself, which was surprising. Resulting DVD looks “just okay”…
I hate to go backward like that but if you pros would stay with “lowest common denominator” I’ll do it.
BTW, I tried another test project using the 29.97p (as opposed to interlaced) and it looks better on the iMac; haven’t burned it yet and I don’t know how compatible it would be (?).
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1 Reply
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Unless you can burn a Blu-Ray, you can’t make a DVD that’s 1080HD.
All “standard” non Blu-ray DVD’s are SD 720×480. Now you do have your choice of 16×9 or 4×3. 16×9 will give you wide screen but the image is actually annimorphic. That is to say that they image still fits into 720×480 but is squished and when you play it on a DVD player and widescreen tv, it will pop out and b wide.
Now you can edit in 1080 and then downconvert on export to SD DVD, but I would think that it would be better if you just started in the format, as then you can see what you will get.
But if you want to upload it to YouTube or Vimeo, then an HD version would be nice, as then people can share it and view it in HD on their computers or mobile devices.
So your choices are:
Edit 1080 HD 29.97 (59.94) – export 1080 HD for web and 720×480 widescreen 16×9 for DVDEdit 720×480(29.97) 16×9 and export to same DVD.
Progressive will look good on computers, Interlaced will look good on broadcast TVs.
Brian Mulligan
Senior Editor – Autodesk Smoke
WTHR-TV Indianapolis,IN, USA
Twitter: @bkmeditor
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