Choosing SD over HD but keeping letter box look

[Kevin Camp]

what is your desitination?

you can work sd widescreen (it’s 720×480 with a 1.2 pixel aspect). then, if you were to make a widescreen dvd it would be letterboxed on 4:3 screens, but fill a 16:9 screen (note, i f you are making dvds that widescreen dvds can be a bit tricky in some software, and some really old dvd players may not letterbox at all). even if your not making a dvd, working in a sd widescreen format may give you better options later, too.

[Cathy Ralph]

Hi moldyboot-

My destination is to circulate the finished short to festivals on standard DVDs (720 x 480) – but I just like the “look” of letterbox, so I thought this would create a faux widescreen effect without actually impacting anything for playback.

Thanks,
Cathy

[Kevin Camp]

i would check into the widescreen dvd options in your dvd authoring software, it would be a better way to go than fake letterbox. you would also want to check out creating progressive dvds. you could then work in a 23.976 fps dv widescreen preset and burn a widescreen progressive disk.

see if the cow has a forum for your dvd software… even if they don’t you might post in one of the dvd forums anyway, many people have used several different applications and can probably give good insight.

[Brendan Coots]

When building projects in After Effects for widescreen, I usually opt to NOT use pixel aspect ratio settings to achieve it, but rather design in square pixel comps sized at 853×480 (for DVD) or 864×486 (for broadcast). When you go to author your DVD, these files will work fine but you will need to tell it you are using a square-pixel file. I use DVD Studio Pro and have never had issues doing it this way.

The reason I use square pixel, widescreen-sized comps instead of toggling aspect ratio on a standard 720×480 composition is quality. The pixel aspect ratio setting essentially takes your design and stretches it horizontally. This can (and usually does) result in a loss in quality because it is taking a set of pixels and redistributing them over a wider field.

The nice thing about this approach is that you don’t have to worry over render settings, making sure everything has the right aspect ratios etc., you just render it as is and pull it in to your DVD authoring app. When set up correctly, people with 16:9 viewing capabilities will see the entire video, people with normal 4:3 TV sets will see it letterboxed.

[Cathy Ralph]

Thanks for all the info! I’m going to do some experiments and see what I come up with.
🙂
-Cathy