720×540 or 720×547

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Dave LaRonde] “should actually make all the permutations of one, single basic 16×9 HD design?”

No sir. HD delivery is set as square pixels. 1280×720 or 1920×1080. Now, how that gets recorded/compressed to certain tape formats is another story, but it eventually always gets displayed as full raster square pixels, so that is how you should design it. Now choosing a frame rate is another story for a different thread, also we are talking SD here not HD.

[Tim Ward]

And how do you lay that off to tape appropriately?

You don’t. Eli works in motion graphics design. They work with digital files. The 720×540 is for the design portion. You can take anything designed at 720×540 and it will look like its SD Best, how ever you get it into the final medium.

And if you have something that comes off of tape to something like a PInnacle Thunder

You don’t put graphics to tape, you import.

I’m sure it simply stretches out the image to square just to compress it back to non square for a non square display (ie CRT TV).

CRTs don’t have pixel aspect ratios because they don’t have pixels. The PAR refers to the video, not the device. Example: HDTVs (CRT/plasma/LCD/DLP/etc) display both square and non-square video.

As far as DVDSP, I’ll have to look at that again. It evidently wasn’t a good choice as a software example. From what I’d seen and read, 720×540 was called for. I’ve been using the same graphics template, and haven’t had time to re-try the 720×486 0.9 PAR approach.

tim

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Tim Ward] “You can take anything designed at 720×540 and it will look like its SD Best, how ever you get it into the final medium.”

Yeah, I guess I see your point as long as you know what to do with it at the end.

[Tim Ward] “CRTs don’t have pixel aspect ratios because they don’t have pixels. The PAR refers to the video, not the device.”

True, but it’s the digital equivalent there of. In order for video to get displayed properly on a CRT, some PAR conversion needs to happen.

[Tim Ward] “You don’t put graphics to tape, you import.
“

Ideally and probably most likely, but if you have an animation that’s coming from tape, you need to ‘import’ or capture it into the Thunder. Then what? It’s 486 from tape, not 540, so the Thunder knows to do something with it.

[Tim Ward] “I’ve been using the same graphics template, and haven’t had time to re-try the 720×486 0.9 PAR approach.”

It’s looking for 720×480, not 486, just like Mpeg-2 video is 480 and not 486.

Jeremy

[Bret Williams]

540 is only a decent choice if you’re working in progressive. If someone hands me a Quicktime movie at 540 it can’t be interlaced. Interpolating that to 486 would be field mush.

And why is it that nobody has mentioned 534? If you’re working in DV or DVD, the correct mathing aspect is 720×534, NOT 540. 540 matches up with 486. A 4:3 ratio. DVD and DV is not actually 4:3. By converting 540 to 480, the image gets 6 pixels squattier.

[Gluman]

Can someone explain to me why a jpeg, created in PS at 720×486, is being distored when brought into FCP and put on a timeline that is set to 720×486? I’ve tried making it square and non-square. It fills the frame, but the image is squeezed horizontally. If I go back into PS and make the image 720×540 it looks fine in FCP. I don’t understand it and don’t remember having this issue before upgrading to FCP 6. The final output will be going to beta tape. Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Joe

[Jeremy Garchow]

what version of ps?

[Gluman]

CS2.

[Tom Wolsky]

Do you understand about pixel aspect ratios to start? If not you should google it.

Apple uses its own scaling system for pixel aspect conversion. It wants you to create images at 720×547 and scale them down inside Photoshop to 720×486 to adjust for the aspect ratio difference. Adobe pixel aspect settings using their D1 pixel presets will behave as expected in FCP, but will not display correctly because Apple uses different calculations. Apple’s calculations for pixel aspect have always been wrong, but that’s the system they use because I believe they find the images can be motion controlled better within the application using their calculations. Whatever.

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 3.5 HD Editing Workshop”

[Gluman]

Thanks Tom.

I have read some articles on it. To say I fully understand it, would be untrue.

Joe