Widescreen 16:9 DVD Carrara animation

[yan]

Hi!

I need to make an anamorphic 16:9 widescreen NTSC DVD, but I find the whole thing quite confusing...

I know that anamorphic widescreen is basically 720X480 pixels, aspect ratio 1.2 (so the pixels are not square).

I rendered a test animation with these settings in Carrara and imported it in Adobe Premiere 1.5 in a anamorphic widescreen 16:9 project. But in Premiere, the animation I did doesn't fill the the widescreen preview window .

I read many articles on various web sites, but I just got more confused: some suggest to create wider images from the start (like 864X480) and then squezze these horizontaly after (in Premiere). I tried that but it blurs my rendering quite a lot...

Can anyone help me? Am I wrong to asume that my renders should be made 720X480? And why is it not showing correctly in Premiere?

[achrystie]

16 x 9 is a 1.7777 repeating 1.8 rounded to 1 aspect ratio, not 1.2. Although I know there is a "pixel" resolution setting in Carrara, but I'm not sure its purpose? What you chose for pixels is actually a 1.5 to 1 aspect ratio. (Divide 720 by 480 and that is the aspect ratio.) You need a ratio of pixels that gives you about 1.8 to 1 like a 16 x 9 aspect ratio to make it fit properly without cropping or stretching. So if the small number stays 480, the larger number is more like 853ish (480 x 1.8), and if the larger number stays the same the smaller number should be more like 400 (720/1.8).
Regardless, most places "oversize" both dimensions a bit, and then crop all four edges to get the proper fit. That way the image never needs to be stretched. For movies put on TV (which is usually 4:3 aspect ratio, they just cut the edges of the movie down to fit).

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that is how it works.

[shatterglass]

Edit: Nevermind anything I said before. Apple has a nice guide here, but you have to change "graphics program" to Carrara and "Final Cut Pro" to Premiere.

And be careful not to confuse pixel aspect ratio (the non-square shape of video pixels) with the overall aspect ratio (16:9, or widescreen).

What's your overall workflow? Eventually you want to end up with a DVD, which uses 720 x 480 MPEG-2 video files.

[yan]

Thanks to all.

Shatterglass, the Apple guide on the subject was really helpfull.

I need to make some more tests, but right now it seems fine.

I did a rendering in Carrara at 853X480, pixel ratio 1. In Premiere I created a project (720X480, anamorphic 16:9) and at first I was surprised: the preview image of my video doesn't fill the width of the preview window (it seems a few pixels shorter). But when I rendered the animation for DVD (directly from premiere) the resulting video played without distortion on my DVD player, no extra black on the sides...

So far, so good...

[shatterglass]

That's good news.

I haven't used Premiere for quite a few versions now, but I know that Final Cut Express gives you a checkbox for viewing your clips on your monitor in "non-square pixel" mode. That is, a properly sized video clip will look squished on a square-pixel monitor. Thing is, it will render just fine. FCE's view options don't change the clip, they just let you "preview" how it will look on TV.

[achrystie]

I didn't read in your first post whether you are compositing or not?
It seems that you aren't.
I think the only time you need to worry about the "non square" pixel aspect ratio is if you're compositing your render with video capture that was taken with a non square pixel aspect ratio. (Which is sometimes hard to tell if you are or are not using square pixels apparently, depending on how the video was captured and in what format from what I read).

So if you're just rendering out of Carrara as a 16:9 aspect ratio, you need to use pixel ranges of the same ratio. If you plan to show/view this on the large screen, you may want to bump your resolution up a bit if you can, as it may get grainy with 853 pixels being somewhat low for larger screens.
It also never hurts to have some extra resolution built in.

[smudgee]

In premiere and efter effects, you can right click on fottage (in list of project files) and choose interpret footage ...then main ....then choose different pixel ratio. Changing this to non sqauare pixels will fill the screen in the premiere preview window.(even if it was rendered in carrara as square pixels)This works but I dont know if its the best /proper way. But it kinda makes sense to me.

But...then how you render the file out of premiere can change this again, I sometimes render out of aftereffects as avi square , but then render to dvd with Nero - at non square , and the final dvd comes out ok.

Render to final dvd is much better for me from Nero, premiere crashes a lot when i try render to dvd from its timeline.

Hope this helps, im still abit confused.

[yan]

Hi everyone!

First of all, thank you for your suggestions: they helped me a lot so far.

I did some tests:

I rendered a short sequence (7 seconds) in 2 resolution: 853X480 and 1706X960 (double width and height), both at pixel ratio 1,0.

Once played on a widescreen TV (not HD but 720pi anyway), I got 99.99% the same quality... (both videos slightly blurred, but nothing dramatic). So what's the idea with rendering larger images (unless I want to get my stuff ready for HDTV)?

Also, my DVD player (Yamaha home theater (model DVR S150) has problems playing the DVD I make: sometimes they play fine,and sometimes I get a "No-Disc" message on the screen. Oddly, when I get that message, I can still shutdown the DVD player and after a restart, the DVD plays...well most of the time...

I tried Memorex DVD and Sony's... Same problems.

When I burn my DVD directly from Premiere, they behave as stated above. If I try other methods (with Nero for example), my DVDs don't work at all... On my home DVD player anyway, because everything works fine every time on my computer's DVD player (a LG)...

What's wrong? Any suggestions?

Overall, its a bit frustrating...

Note: By the way, my project is 100% 3d animation (no compositing).

[smudgee]

Thats heavy iregularities , but you sound like the patient type.

I make a lot of dvds , and watcch a lot of dvds , and it makes me cringe often. Maybe 1 out of 10 fails .

Is 7 secounds too short ??????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????????
(just an idea , no technical reason , i would copy it a few times onto you r premiere timeline)

In premiere I always uncheck "optimize stills " from keyframing and rendering settings.

I use nero 6 /nero vision express 2 , it has option to make 16:9 widescreen I I heard that that nero 7 sucks.

I tryed "Sonic dvdit6" , could make better DVD menus, and can make "open dvd", a kind of editable dvd. Was'a bit slower tho' .

I make dvd's for Pub screen advertising , 4 pubs now , probally 4 differnent dvd players , but they all play ok, burnt with nero vision express 2.

Keep us informed man.

[yan]

Tried again, but with a longer clip (2 minutes) and it works!

So it seems that home DVD players (at least mine) don't like very short clips (unless I try to put many very short clips and make a menu...hummm... something else to experiment).

It's a blessing DVDs are cheap nowadays...

I keep on testing...

[Sardtok]

You might want to use a DVD-/+RW if your dvd player and burner support it.
Anyway, I've rendered widescreen stuff before, and has looked like it is supposed to (an image that has been squeezed to fit a 4:3 format).
I just changed the pixel aspect ratio to the correct one, and set the resolution to the amount of pixels that there's in PAL (I'm from Europe).
Remember that 4:3 doesn't have square pixels either, although there are square pixel resolution versions of both PAL and NTSC, for PAL it's: 768x576 for square pixels, and 720x576 for wide pixels(1.066(666666666667) and the extra wide pixels of the widescreen version :1.42)
For NTSC, 4:3 has a 0.9 pixel aspect ratio, while widescreen has 1.2.
Below are images from a simple scene (a single cube) which shows how they look in PAL, both in widescreen and in 4:3 and the settings used to render them.
When placed in a PAL layer, with 1.066 or 1.42 pixels these should fit no matter what, but one will look stretched and the other wouldn't (squashed version would look normal, while the almost normal version would look stretched).