Got a new 16:9 TV, have some questions...

[sdsumike619]

So I've finally joined the 21st century and bought a 16:9 bigscreen TV. Up til now I've been encoding video for my 4:3 television. I have a video I want to put onto a DVD, but the source is 480x360 (why I don't know). I'm using Sony Vegas 7. Two questions:

1) I've always used the NTSC DV (720x480, 29.970 fps) template in the project properties window. Should I now be using something different?

2) When I setup the actual encoder to encode the video to MPEG2, what frame size should be set there as well?

Another thought I just had: I create educational DVDs for sale on a website. The source video has always been standard NTSC 720x480 and I always encoded it as such. Never got any complaints about the DVD looking funny on 16:9 TVs, so should I just keep on doing them the same way? I don't HAVE the new TV yet, it's to be delivered tomorrow, so I guess I can just pop one it to see what it looks like. I imagine it probably stretches out the 4:3 to 16:9 to fill up the space, is that correct? You can see where I'm confused about the relationship between the Project properties frame size, the frame size of the actual encoded video and the TV itself..

[jagabo]

Your source appears to be 4:3 (480x360). You might as well use the NTSC DV template and encode as 4:3 DVD.

Your HDTV will allow you to choose between displaying a 4:3 video pillarboxed in the center of the 16:9 screen, or any of several methods of stretching it to fill the 16:9 screen.

Frame size (storage aspect ratio, SAR) is not equivalent to display aspect ratio (DAR). It depends on the shape of the pixels (pixel aspect ratio, PAR):

DAR = SAR * PAR

DVD is limited to two DARs, 4:3 and 16:9. Both use a 720x480 frame size.

[sdsumike619]

OK thank you, I'll use the NTSC DV template at 720x480 , and encode the video at the same frame size...

[Epicurus8a]

Your source appears to be 4:3 (480x360). You might as well use the NTSC DV template and encode as 4:3 DVD.

Your HDTV will allow you to choose between displaying a 4:3 video pillar boxed in the center of the 16:9 screen, or any of several methods of stretching it to fill the 16:9 screen.

agree 100%.

[guns1inger]

Check the framerate of the source. If it is 23.976 then encode as 23.976 with pulldown, rather than 29.97 fps.

[sdsumike619]

Guns1inger, thanks for the info, but I was just interested in frame size, not frame rate, it's 29.97 fps though...

[SatStorm]

Well, the new fashion at the time being, is encoding your 4:3 on letterboxed 14:9 (yeap, you read correct...)

Personally, I crop 72 lines (36 of the top and 36 of the bottom), then during the resize I encode at 680X576 (or 672X576) expended to 720. That way I loose only 72 vertical lines of the 4:3 picture and there is an error of about 32 horizontal lines (or 24), which I can live with...