Switching to 16:9 Aspect Ratio - Frame Size?

Steve K

The 48 Hour Film Contest folks really prefer 16:9 aspect ratio, although they accept my 720x480 frame size animations, which are 3:2 aspect (I think). I think they just put black bars at the sides to keep the proportions correct. Although it has happened that the video just got stretched, when I guess they forgot the bars.

So to go to 16:9, do I keep the 480 height and just raise the width to 853? I.e. I end up with 853x480, 16:9 aspect ratio. This is all NTSC, 30 frames per second. That's almost a 20% rise in area, so the renders will take longer. :coolhmm:

NoName99

That sounds right.

I'm not sure what program you're using, but layering a black solid that is 853x480 underneath your main video should give you the pillar boxes on the left and right, and bring it to 16:9 without stretching.

I have noticed that Film Festivals will often times screw this up and stretch/squeeze videos, even when checking the details with the festival staff. Definitely better to take as much guess work out of it as possible and handle the pillar boxes yourself.

DUDU

The most common aspect 16-9 is 720 X 1280 (720p) but recently, it is the 1920x1080p which is mostly used.
I make my renders in 1050 X 576p because with the quality of the renders in Carrara (anti-aliasing: 0,5) I can upscale my footages by keeping an excellent resolution compared to full HD cinema.
Most important is to create sequences of images rather than interlaced avi which makes lose much resolution.

Steve K

OK, thanks to you both. I *think* I like the 853x480 option better, either with a black box or just rendered at that size, since it should take much less render time than the "normal" widescreen sizes (e.g. 720p). Time is important in a 2 day contest. My 720x480 entries in past years have usually looked OK on the theater screen, all I want to do is make sure they don't get stretched when the contest folks forget that its 720x480 SD (i.e. 3:2 instead of 16:9). In fairness, they do say they prefer 16:9, so I'm going to try some tests.

Steve K

dinopt said:

That sounds right.

I'm not sure what program you're using, but layering a black solid that is 853x480 underneath your main video should give you the pillar boxes on the left and right, and bring it to 16:9 without stretching.

I have noticed that Film Festivals will often times screw this up and stretch/squeeze videos, even when checking the details with the festival staff. Definitely better to take as much guess work out of it as possible and handle the pillar boxes yourself.

I forgot to mention, the animation is done in Carrara Pro 8.1, where I can set the frame size to anything. The video editor is Magix Movie Edit Pro Premium, which has a bunch of presets and custom settings that I *think* will cover everything we've discussed.

DUDU

I take part regularly in festivals and contests as jury or like simple spectator and I still see films in 4/3 but the problem comes from the material of projection…
Indeed, all the films carried out in 4/3 are projected almost in nearly 4/4 because of the system of projection.
I chose to keep DV format for my renders, but in full images with square pixels, and upscaling at 720p (format MPEG) for projections in theaters.
If you want that your image is projected with a correct ratio, choose a format 16/9, it 's preferable to have a black edge around the image rather than to have a deformed image…

Steve K

DUDU_00001 said:

...
If you want that your image is projected with a correct ratio, choose a format 16/9, it 's preferable to have a black edge around the image rather than to have a deformed image…

Yes, that's where I'm headed. Maybe without the black, just render @ 853x480. Or maybe not, I'm not sure the wide frame (with its longer render time) will help many of my shots.

Could we all just go back to 640x480? Good ol' VGA with hundreds ... hundreds! ... of colors. It was good enough for my trusty 486 machine ... :P