Authoring for HDTV

[Exedus]

OK hopefully this will make sense.

I'm putting together a video presentation for a company using after effects. It's basically like a power point presentation but I want to put it on DVD. It's going to be displayed on a 50 inch plasma wide screen TV. I'm putting together the video in after effects using the setting for HDTV resolution. Everything looks great except when I bring it into Premeire. I'm usung premiere pro 7. I can't find any settings for HD in premiere for burning to DVD. So basically the sides of my video are getting cut off. Is there anything I can do?

[Exedus]

There are no presets in Premiere for HDTV but there is in FInal cut pro. Unfortunately I don't have a Mac so that's not an option.

[hutchca]

Well to start with, you can't put HD on a DVD. There is no High Definition DVD yet.
The best you can do on DVD now is 480P with 16x9 (Widescreen) aspect ratio.
That may be why Premiere doesn't have HD presets. You probably just need to use the 16:9 preset.

Do you mean the sides are actually being cut off(1), or is it just that there is no picture on the sides because your video is standard 4:3 aspect ratio(2)?

(1)If Premiere is cutting off the sides of a 16x9 picture to make it 4x3...
Make sure Premiere is working in widescreen mode.
I'm still using 6.0 so I don't know what settings are available in 7, but in Premiere 6, I would use the "Widescreen 48KHz" preset to start with.
If you've been working in widescreen already, it could be happening in the MPEG conversion phase. Check your MPEG encoder settings.


(2)If your source video is 4:3 to start with, you won't be able to change the aspect ratio without causing distortion (stretching) of the picture.
You can either stretch it to 16x9 or go back and re-create the presentation in 16x9.

[tito13kfm]

Or Encode to HDTV settings and export to DVHS
DVHS is the only media on the market that allows HDTV resolutions that I know of.

[Exedus]

Could I just leave the high def video on the computer and use video out to hook in to the back of the plasma screen?

Also to answer the question above: Yes Premier is cutting off the side of the image for some reason. Originally I did the project in 16:9 in after effects with no high definintion. After I burned the DVD in premiere I had a black border around the whole screen on my TV instead of just on the top and bottom like I expected.

[Exedus]

OK, I just tested the video on the plasma today. I ran it straight from the laptop and sure enough the TV simply stretched the image so it wouls fill the whole screen horizontally. Plus the black bars are still on the top and the bottom.

So what should I do?