[Richard Mamary]

Thanks again.
I had to run out for a couple of hours but am back.
I understand that the photos will not fill a widescreen TV at 3:2.
I will be happy at this point to have it appear letterboxed on a 4:3 set, and have black bars on the sides of a widescreen TV. Without the squeezing, or cropping off of the sides.
Does this change your recommendations??
If I change the photos resolution to 864×480 that will distort the photos, (stretched).
Anyway, I set the composition to the preset DV 720 x 480 widescreen, it looked squeezed but unsqueezed when I checked the toggle pixel aspect ratio button in the composition window.
I then rendered it as an animation. (Note: There is no 16:9 setting in animation setting.)
I used cleaner to encode the animation to mpeg2, (DV-NTSC to DVD)
I imported that mpeg2 into DVDSP and set the preferences for both simulator and encoder to 16:9.
The simulator showed 16:9, but the image was squeezed.
And, when I opened the burned TS folder in DVD player, the window was 4:3 only, and the image was further squeezed with black bars on the sides.
I did not burn it as a hard copy. Does it make a difference?
Could something be wrong with my DVDSP, that the window in DVD player was not widescreen, when I encoded it to be?
I had to do an archive and install a couple of weeks ago, maybe there is a component missing.
Quicktime player also wouldn’t open my mpeg2 encoded movie, though DVDSP did.
(sigh…) Thanks again for all your help

[Richard Mamary]

Steve,
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
The photo’s aspect ratio I’m starting with are effectively 720 x 480 (4368×2912), with square pixels.
The photographer I’m working with doesn’t want to lose any of her image.
To get to 405 horizontal lines I’d Have 608 x 405.
Do I need to resize, or change the pixel aspect ratio in Photoshop first?
Otherwise, I’ll will try it anyway with the 720 x 480 photos in the DV-NTSC composition preset, which automatically gives me D1 DV-NTSC Widescreen (1.2) pixel aspect ratio, and export it as animation.
I am a Mac user and DVD Studio Pro is my burning App. which will encode on its own. The choices are 4:3 or 16:9. Is it better that I use Cleaner to encode the animation file first? Does it make a difference?
Then off course I will flag it as 16:9 for the burn.
Thanks again

[Richard Mamary]

Would I also then be rendering the composition at 16:9, so that I can eventually get a file that will burn so that it will be as full as possible on a widescreen TV, and letter-boxed on a 4:3?
And would I then burn it at 16:9 as well?

[Richard Mamary]

Thanks for the reply.
Do you mean 720 x 540?
There is a composition preset in AE for 720 x 540 with square pixels.