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16:9 COMP FOR MPEG1 PLAYBACK
I’ve read alot of posts on here for 16:9 comps within After Effects for output to DVD, using the widescreen comp preset. However, I have a client that needs to have a 16:9 animated background rendered to MPEG1 for playback on a plasma screen, NOT from DVD, but directly from a PC using the MPEG format. I would assume that, at that point, a 720×486 render would be useless to me. Should I just create a square pixel 864×486 comp and create the animation there, rendering out at the same 864×486 size? Also, won’t the MPEG1 compression make the final look pretty bad? Thanks for any suggestions.
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5 Replies
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The thing here is what compression utility you will be using to encode the MPEG. Technically, MPEG-1 was never meant to be larger than 320×240 pixels, but the “loose” MPEG spec employed by some tools will of course allow you to use the compression on any size of footage. So to end all my hubub: If you use ProCoder for instance, you would be on the save side but I don’t know how others handle it. Playback should be no problem – since it’s going to be played from a computer, you can use full data rates and though not as good as MPEG-II, it should not look that terrible. We are doing this with SD clips for PowerPoint presentations quite regularly and it looks okay. If it’s an option, you might advise your client to use Windows Media – it looks even better and is also usable in PoweRPoint or whatever. ;o)
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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Thanks for the advice! I might ask the client if they can take MPEG2, since I know I can get a good compression out of that through Compressor. As of now, that’s the only compression software I have. But just to reiterate, as long as I keep things 864×486 square pixels, I’ll be okay for the plasma playback, correct?
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Well, you can never be sure until you ask… ;o) Ideally you would create your footage at the maximum resolution the screen supports, but since Windows will automatically fit your video into the desktop resolution and send that to the screen, it’s not that critical. Yes, keeping square pixels is a good idea. You’d only use anamorphic pixels for “true” video which is not relevant in your case.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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Thank you Mylenium, I’ll continue along that path then. You’re probably the most knowledgable person on these boards, I appreciate your help. Love your site too, you do awesome work!
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Thank you Mylenium, I’ll continue along that path then. You’re probably the most knowledgable person on these boards, I appreciate your help. Love your site too, you do awesome work!
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