Pixel Aspect Ratio

[Jeff Brown]

First off: check with the venue and see if they will project letterboxed. If so, you shouldn’t need to do anything.

Otherwise:

[Sarah Chapka] “Do I need to convert all the footage to another pixel aspect ratio before I export? And if so will I loose resolution?

Yes. NSTC 4:3 DV uses a 0.9 P.A.R. You have a choice of: cropping the edges and scaling up the center 4:3 area (in which case you will lose resolution), or putting your 16:9 in a 4:3 letterboxed format, in which case you will not lose resolution or image, you’ll just have black borders top and bottom. FYI, Premiere is not so good at scaling; I’d use AfterEffects or hardware conversion if you have those options.

Also- Iam having a video comapny convert my film onto Mini Dv- does anyone know if it makes a difference resolution wise, or any other way, if I send it to them on a dvd to convert to mini dv.”

Yes- a video-DVD is compressed, miniDV is compressed, you will lose data in the conversion. Bad idea. Research a way to give them an uncompressed file (QTime or AVI) to do the conversion with. Probably by using a portable (USB) hard drive. Or, check in to renting a miniDV recorder, and master from your own editing setup.

Oh– and if you are using PAL video, the pixel aspects are different than NTSC.

Adobe’s Digital Video Primer should help you understand your formats more.

I have to say it’s rather odd to hear of a screening room that only does 4:3, and will not accept video-DVD these days.

-Jeff

[Sarah Chapka]

Thanks for the info. They used to screen on dvd but they had too many cases of people providing bad discs that would stop working and interrupt the show (it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the bunch)….Your advice was very helpful- I think I am going to add the letterbox (matte template) because I like that look and I don’t think it’ll cut off too many of my shots.

Thanks
Sarah