• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  640×480 OK when output is DVD?

  Posted by Tom Donnelly on July 17, 2008 at 3:52 pm

  Working with someone who insists on working at 640×480 square pixels (animation, after fx, machinima, etc) – a lot of times these pieces go to DVD, where of course they need to get re-sized to 720×480 upon encoding.

  If I bring a 640×480 movie into a 720×480 comp in after effects (or a FCP sequence for that matter) the difference appears negligible, but obviously it is a hair smaller and not EXACTLY the same proportions.

  Is there any clear advantage in quality for working at 720×480 over 640×480 when output will be DVD – or is the miniscule bump from 640×480 when encoding to MPEG-2 not a big deal?

  Chris Borjis replied 17 years, 10 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Chris Borjis

  July 17, 2008 at 4:18 pm

  640×480 square pixels is basically the same thing as 720×480 non square.

  the non-square has a bit of an anamorphic characteristic to it.

  watch any dvd movie on a computer, take a snapshot, bring it in to photoshop, at 720×480 it looks slightly squeezed, resize it to 640×480, now it looks normal.

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