creating a TV commercial on spec – what size comp?

[Michael Szalapski]

It depends on the specs of the tv station. Is it HD or SD? Are you in Europe, the States or somewhere else? We need more information before we can give you any help.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[David Del]

It is in Canada for CTV.

[David Del]

Ok, they told me Beta SP/SX. The challenge I am having is getting a hold of someone that can tell me the dimensions for the comp. I am creating. If I can get away with 720X540, that is great. I don’t want to put the comp together and find out a week from now that it is too small and have to redo it all again…

[Kevin Camp]

beta sp/sx in canada will be ntsc d1 standard, but that can be either widescreen (16×9) or 4×3 so you might want clarification on that.

once you have that cleared up, you’ll just choose one of the d1 comp presets. i’d typically work with the non-square pixel d1 presets, so either d1 standard or d1 widescreen. you can work in a square pixel d1 preset, but you will then drop that into a non-square pixel d1 comp for the final render.

are they expecting you to provide this on beta sp/sx tape? if so you’ll need to track down someone with a beta sp/sx deck and a clean tape. if not, you’ll need to know the file type they need delivered. you want both the container/format (like mov, avi, etc.) and the codec (mpeg-2, animation, uncompressed, etc.) and any specs for the codec settings like the data rate or other compression settings.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[David Del]

If I have started a project already, can I change the spec in the comp or is it better to start over?

Thanks for the info

[Kevin Camp]

if you started in a 720×540 square pixel comp that is 29.97, then you can keep working that way.

for the final, you’ll want to drop that into an ntsc d1 standard comp (720×486, 29.97 fps, 0.9 pixel aspect) and choose layer>transform>fit to comp and render that. it’s actually a fairly common way to work.

the only issue you may have is if they want it widescreen, then you’ll be forced to rework your 4×3 comp. that usually involves resizing or rebuilding elements to fill the 16×9 screen… some times it’s pretty simple, other times it’s a lot of work, it really depends. the cc repetile effect can often be very helpful, it will allow you to expand the left/right sides of a layer to help fill the screen when resizing doesn’t work well. when placed above other effects on the same layer, it will expand those effects too. it also has some tiling options that can help in some situations (‘unfold’ being one that i’ve found useful).

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Joey Burnham]

if you are working in 4×3 and they want 16×9 you can keep your comp settings at ntsc d1 and scale everything up 33% on the y-axis. Parenting everything to a null can make this easier.
Joey