Is it possible to create a HD 4:3 project?

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi David,

With each passing day, less and less people even own a 4:3 TV set. I’d work to convince the client to stick with 16:9 since everything is going that way (already gone, really!).

That said, HD is by nature widescreen – there is no 4:3 HD format. You could finish your edit in the HD timeline, export to an appropriate HD format (some type of .avi file likely), then Import that clip into a 4:3 SD project where you can Scale the video to fill the screen (eliminate letterboxing)and also position left and right to keep the subject in frame. I believe this is what they called “Pan & Scan” when films were converted to 4:3 for VHS (most are now 16:9) on DVD.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor

[David Payne]

Jeff,

Thanks for your quick reply. I would agree 4:3 is dead and buried, but unfortunately powerpoint has not yet made the switch to 16:9 and this is what is causing the problem.

For quality reasons I’d be happy to leave this as 16:9 as it will eventually be played online as well as a widescreen TV.

However… its a case of how to position a 4:3 powerpoint slide as well as the talking head to make them look decent. I was thinking of using a slight reflection under the powerpoint but the problem is then where to position the video.

Or I could add some same coloured background either side of the ppt slide to make it look 16:9, although the space would be wasted…

[Aaron O’neil]

Hey, I’d say Jeff has got the right idea.

I regularly use powerpoint with 16:9 aspect ratio, and often enough at HD resolution. You do this by adjusting the “Page Setup Options” and changing the page size. I think it only uses distances, not resolution, but that might be different in 2007 (I haven’t had to check that till now, to be honest). But if it doesn’t use resolutions. I find that 24cm long and 13.5 will usually give you a good high res 16:9 image. Basically, the length has to be 1.78 times longer than the height, and you’ll be fine.

As for the editting question. Finish your project in 16:9 HD and export it. Then, (assuming you’re using premiere) you can choose to open a new project, and customise the settings. I find that tweaking the “DV PAL” (Or DV NTSC if you’re in an NTSC region) option is usually the easiest. You’d want to set the resolution to 1440×1080, and change the framerate to about 60 (these options should be pretty easy to find, although let me know if you can’t)

Best of Luck 🙂

[David Payne]

Thanks Aaron.
The only problem is I have already exported all of the ppt pages in 4:3. I’ll just add the right colour background image under the slide to fill the edges out I think. Just a shame it will all be wasted space.

Thanks for the advice on the export settings. I’ll work on it all of today and post back if I have any more questions as you’ve both been so helpful 🙂

[David Payne]

Aaron, with the exporting thing do you mean export as HD mpeg and then import it into another standard timeline with the res adjusted to 1440×1080? What benefit would you get by doing this when compared to just exporting the flash file etc straight from the original timeline?