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Need help with HDV to DVD using DVD Architect
I’ve been editing a feature documentary project using native HDV in Avid Media Composer – I usually use Vegas for my projects, but this film is interview heavy so I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to try out Media Composer’s scriptsync feature. So I’m trying to get this out to DVD and what I’ve been doing is first exporting HDV from Avid and then simply importing the HDV file into DVD Architect and using it to convert the file to mpeg2 and burn the actual DVD. It seems to be working pretty well image quality wise, but the aspect ratio seems off.
Which project video format should I select (720×480, 720×480 widescreen, 704×480) so the aspect ratio appears correctly? Do I have to do anything strange since I’m working with 4:3 1440×1080 HDV? Are there any other settings I should tweak for this kind of conversion? I’ve got a screening coming up and I just want my project to looks its best. Thanks for the help in advance.
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4 Replies
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One last thing: I’m kind of pressed for time so options with fewer renders / shorter rendering times are preferrable although not absolutely necessary.
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Are you sure that your HDV is intended to display as 4:3? HDV with a frame size of 1440 x 1080 with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.333 would display as 16:9. You could try to create a project setting for widescreen HDV, bring in widescreen HDV footage, and render as widescreen DVD 720 x 480.
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It’s not intended to be displayed at 4:3, but that’s how the actual HDV is formatted – how it is captured from the sony sensor. This means converting it to any kind of widescreen format requires some adjustments.
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You mentioned that the project is being edited in Avid. I would export the timeline from Avid as 720 x 480 widescreen MPEG2 using DVD compliant settings, and then toss the streams into a DVD authoring program. Rendering from Avid as HDV and then rendering that HDV to DVD resolution adds an entire rendering stage that isn’t needed.
The HDV file system does use 1440 x 1080 frames, but when you create an HDV workspace in an editing program it processes the footage with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.333, which is intended to display similar to footage that is 1920 x 1080 square pixels. Most editing programs have a preview monitor that can display your HDV footage as 16:9 intended display or actual 4:3 which appears to be squashed horizontally. If your editing program has HDV project templates and widescreen export templates, the “adjustments” to display as widescreen should automatically be entered by the templates.
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