pixel aspect ratio in stills for dvd

[SexMoron]

Hello. I am creating a dvd of a wedding. I wanted a section that gave sort of a "credits" for all the wedding participants; best man, maid of honor, officiator, yada yada yada...

So, not all people who participated had good video shots, so I resorted to still photos to create these.

The idea was to create 720X480 frames in photoshop and import them into Premiere (ps6.0, premiere6.5).

This idea worke fine when I was just using video elements. But when I stuck a still shot into a 720x480 frame Premiere distorted the photo element. It looked okay in PS6 But was distorted in Premiere 6.5

Now, the 720x480 frame looked fine. Only the photo element inside the frame was elongated lengthwise.

I've played around with this. In photoshop I changed the image size so the photo element had 1 x .9 ratio. That didn't work. Vica versa. That didn't work either.

In Premiere you can use "maintain aspect ratio" on a photo you import. But in this case I have a composite. A piece of a photo in a 720x480 frame, and "maintain aspect ratio" does not work.

Mainly, what I am doing is making vignettes with the photos and dropping them into the 720x480 frame. My plan is to then import this into Premiere so I can make titles on each frame that fade in and out before proceeding to the next frame in the time line.

Workaround?

Thanks.

[SexMoron]

Well, I just answered my own question. When you choose the correct pixel aspect ratio in Premiere and THEN select "maintain aspect ratio" it all falls into place.

Thanks anyway.

[mats.hogberg]

Well, I'd work in a 16:9 or 4:3 AR image (any res that fits either of these) and as a last step resize to 720x480.

/Mats

[SexMoron]

Yes, this is what I picked up on a day later. I found a tutorial that said to compose your screen in 720x540 and once completed to resample the image to 720x480.

Works great. But, I do have another question about it. Say that I do an image capture from video and take that into Photoshop. In this case I don't do any resample, I just compose the image in 720x480. For some reason this will preserve it's AR. I doesn't look flattened at all in Photoshop and looks okay in Premiere.

I could understand if the image looked distorted in Photoshop, (that's what I would expect). But it doesn't look that way at all.

[holeepassion]

I have the same issue in relation to including still pictures in DVD production.

Here are what I want to to do. I want to mix my avi video in 640 x 480 aspect ratio with pictures quality in 2816 x 2112. Do I need to reduce the pixel dimensions to 640 x 480 ? Doesn't it change the resolution of the picture ? I really want the highest quality picture in the DVD ? If there is a way to change without losing the resolution, how in Photoshop 7 ?


I have done some processing in Wax, when I set up the output as 720 x 480, the picture has less black pixels on the right and left sides of the images than the avi images. Would changing the resolution of still images to 640 x 480 to make it looking consistent ???

I want to make a DVD in NTSC format, with wide angle 16:9 aspect ratio. I heard something about 16:9 aspect enhanced ? How do I go about this ? I also wonder in another forum thread, there is no wide angle resizing aspect for the wide angle format, and need to use the 4:3 format, why is that ??? Is it still possible to make the wide angle though with the source aspect being 640 x 480.

Now, according to what I have read, I have to resize the aspect to 720 x 480 (or ideally 704 width), which means that I have to add 8 pixels either side. With the emergence of wide angle TVs, I think it is the best format. I know however that most 4:3 format has the wide angle facility also nowadays. If I create in wide angle format, and someone with TV of 4:3 format views it, I would expect them to see bars on the bottom and top of the screen. Is that correct ? What would happen I wonder if they change it to wide angle ? Are they the same as the wide angle TVs ???

[mats.hogberg]

As both 640x480 and 2816x2112 is 4:3, there should be no difference.
Since it's 4:3, there's no sense in creating a 16:9 DVD.

/Mats

[holeepassion]

Thanks for the response. I am wondering what you mean there is no sense creating a wide angle format ?

Since the trend seems to go towards wide angle so I wonder if it would be better for me to create such DVD ?

I wonder how it would appear on 16:9 wide angle tv if i keep the 4:3 format ???? side/pillar bars ????

[mats.hogberg]

Pillar bared, yes. And would still be pillar bared on a 4:3 TV
If you want to take advantage of the 16:9 format, you must have 16:9 source material (or crop top/bottom of your 4:3 format sources to make them 16:9)

/Mats