Video Techs Please Help

[osbe53]

I created a video (in several parts) of two 3d talking animated characters for a client. The characters are in a blue bordered box and will the in the final product the box will be in the bottom left corner taking up about 30% of the screen. I created the box with dimensions of 800x960
I still have to put the parts together in my video editor and then send it to him. I will reduce the vido down to 400x480 when I send it to my clinet

He is going to take what I have done and send it to a video house and put some kind of a background on it and they will also be making DVD's of it.

I am going to send my part of the video to him on a data DVD as a AVI file
My question is should I make the final in Square Pixel or DV format and should I leave it at 400x480 or 720 x 480 (with the 400x480 situated in the middle) and make sure the outside of the box is an alpha chanel.

Thank You Osbe53

[northcat_8]

I would send it to him at 720x480 DV-AVI. As long as you are encoding in a good DV codec. Whatever is going to give you the highest quality.

I would situate the image in the middle of the screen and let them move and resize it as needed. You never know, once they have it and are putting it together, they may change what they want to do with it and if they have a centered 720x480 file to work with that gives them more flexability. It's not very difficult for them to make it smaller if they need to...but if it's smaller and they want bigger...that's going to be a problem.

[offline]

High quality DV is fine but it rarely hurts to call and ask the production house tech what they prefer. It is good business to offer a choice and
you won't look less professional for asking.

[NoodleMaps]

I agree with offline. To many times I have recieved AVI files that I needed to call back because I couldn't use. Save yourself the time and the production houses time by calling first and finding out what will work the best.

[Cornucopia]

If the clip(s) is short enough, do it as uncompressed. That'll take some of the hassle out. How was your original clip configured? Try to keep the # of compression generations down to the lowest possible. You may want to give the original full-screen to the production house (provided they don't muck it up)...

Scott

[spectroelectro]

Yes yes yes,, what Cornucopia said. Except I'd encode it to Huffyuv with YUY. That's nearly as small as a Type 2 or Type 1 DV but lossless. It's *crucial* that you use a lossless method of compression when compisiting video into other video. Uncompressed is monstrously huge, but if you have the storage space, go for it. Otherwise huffyuv. Compositing video into video will produce artifacts which are visible & ugly if you use a compressed video format like Type 1 or Type 2 DV. The artifacts typically show up as pixelated junk around the edges of what you're compositing.