HD?,SD??, Widescreen?? I’m confused!

[Steve Eisen]

Your DVD was SD (standard definition). HD DVD is a dead format. Blu Ray is the only Hi Def DVD. You would need a Blu ray burner to create a Blu Ray disc.

To make your life easier, just place your SD footage on your HD timeline and render.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Bret Williams]

Unless it\’s a BluRay disc, it\’s a SD DVD.

But in either case, most your footage is HD, so you would be best served to continue working in the best resolution and place your SD footage within the timeline and simply repeat your earlier process.

You have some options though. The SD won\’t fill the screen. You may want to fill the voids on the left and right creatively or just leave them black. Or, you could enlarge the SD footage to fill, but you\’ll lose quite a bit of sharpness, as well as a chunk of the image off the top and bottom.

[Bret Williams]

Well there is the AVCHD BluRay on a regular DVD disc. You can create those with either toast, compressor, or the share command. You can get about 30min of 1080i on a regular DVD disc. Until I start making longer programs, this format fits my Blu-Ray needs and it looks fantastic.

[Gautam Pandey]

Hi Steve! Thanks for the reply.

Just to clarify.. the DVD is SD, but has 16:9 ratio because it’s a widescreen SD and and looks better (maybe)
because it was made from a HD source

am i way off? 🙂

Gautam Pandey
http://www.riverbankstudios.com

[Gautam Pandey]

Thanks Bret! its definitely not Blu Ray 🙂

So the whole ‘HD DVD’ (which i just learnt is a dead format) is not HD.. so what was it?

Because when I burn the 1080i MOV in toast the output looks good and the aspect ratio looks like the timeline.

Gautam Pandey
http://www.riverbankstudios.com

[Chris Wiggles]

You are not being very clear as to what you’re doing here.

Standard definition DVDs can be letterboxed 16:9 (basically 4:3 with bars authored on the disc), or anamorphic 16:9 (stretched, no bars written on the disc all disc res used for the video), depending on how you authored the DVD.

In both cases the pixel sampling aspect ratio is non-square, because NTSC is non-square, even when it is non-anamorphic (not stretched). But you can sort of think of it as ‘square’ letterbox 16:9, or ‘squished’ anamorphic 16:9.

But you are being so vague, I can’t really tell what it is you’re doing, because frankly I’m not sure you know what it is you did…

Regards,
Chris

[Bret Williams]

I thought his post was anything but vague. He edited in 1080 HD. He made a widescreen disc which was either SD or HD. He wanted to know the best way to edit some SD material into his timeline. Should he reedit in SD or add the HD material to the HD timeline. In the end, the only thing he didn’t know wS the format of the disc other than it was 16:9.

BTW letterboxed is not a DVD format. DVDs are either 4:3 or 16:9 (anamorphic). There’s no APEC for letterboxed. Letterboxed is nothing more than an artistic choice, but it would be considered a 4:3 disc. Not widescreen. There aren’t any letterboxed Hollywood movies for example. Letterboxed is a description of how your DVD player displays a 16:9 disc on a 4:3 screen. If a DVD is labeled widescreen, it means 16:9 anamorphic, not letterboxed.

[Gautam Pandey]

Hi Chris…

I think Brets summed it for me 🙂

I basically want to know two things

1. when i burn a 1080i MOV exported from a HD timeline, through toast, what format is it?

2. If the final DVD output is SD, should i change my timeline to SD widescreen as i need to add some SD footage now?

Thanks

Gautam Pandey
http://www.riverbankstudios.com

[Chris Tompkins]

What you’re burning in Toast is a SD DVD.

Edit HD.
Export HD.

Compress for DVD or Web.

Done.

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC

[Gautam Pandey]

perfect! Thanks Chris 🙂

Gautam Pandey
http://www.riverbankstudios.com