Widescreen vs 4:3

[BeachNut]

Hello, I'm putting a slideshow togetherwith Vegas and want to understand what image size I should be using. The final DVD will be played on PAL widescreen. Is this 720x576 or does this refer to the 4:3 screen size? I'm quite confused about how to size the images to avoid compressionwhen being viewed. Any help or links would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[mats.hogberg]

PAL full D1 is always 720x576 - regardless of 4:3 or 16:9
The aspect ratio is just a flag in the video that tells the TV how to display it.

/Mats

[guns1inger]

In Vegas, make sure your project properties are set for a widescreen project (PAL Widescreen or NTSC Widescreen templates), and your preview window is set to Simulate Device Aspect Ratio.

Add your photos to the timeline, and use event pan/crop to frame them correctly within the preview window. Vegas will take care of the resizing required for 16:9 playback (i.e. the 'anamorphic' vertical stretch)

If you are concerned out making sure the photos will frame correctly, use one of the widescreen video templates in photoshop (if you use it) to prep your work.

[edDV]

Or import your slides as larger size (square pixel)* and let Vegas downsize it to fit. You might test several methods.

*Some example resolutions

1440x1080 (4:3 aspect)
2592x1944 (4:3 aspect)**
1280x720 (16:9 aspect)
1920x1080 (16:9 aspect)

** my Canon S60 maximum size.

[dipstick]

Doing it in Vegas shouldn't be a problem because Vegas resizes all images to project size by default.

Premiere on the other hand, keeps original size (much better in my opinion), so it would help to import images correctly sized by Aspect Ratio. PhotoShop CS makes this easy. I created some Templates that work very well for importing into Primiere for NTSC 720x480 16:9 (sorry I only work in NTSC):




I allso use DVD-Lab Pro to auther 16:9 menus, so I created a template that works great in DVD-Lab Pro:




Just Right-click on images and save as PNG. You can then "CROP" your images to fit in these templates to get the correct Aspect Ratio.

[dblue]

hey dipstick check your pm's