How much enlargement from a DVD

[John C.]

I've been invited to present a documentary of mine in a theatre. My concern is that my work is on a DVD and that the magnification will be enormous. Will the projected image retain any detail? Is it better for me to find an excuse and withrdraw?
Does anybody have any similar experience?

P.S. I understand that a DVD is OK for their equipment.

[Mike_Donis]

I've screened DVX-shot movie off of DVD onto a cinema's 25-foot screen, and while it was soft, it certainly looked acceptable. Nobody complained about the image quality - and even if a 35mm print would look better, it wasn't so horrid as to be worth withdrawing your movie.

[Constantine]

If you've been given the honor of being INVITED to present your work, by all means PRESENT YOUR WORK!

[John C.]

Thanks for the support. The originality of my film is that it's entirely made of (hundreds of) still images. Having said that, I have a question that may sound silly: Is there any way I can take advantage of the fact that stills are very much larger than normal video frames, and obtain higher image quality from a DVD (something like HDV)?

[Norm Sanders]

I don't believe the stills would help or look much different in the end ... remember, it's all compressed down to a 720x480 MPEG2 at the end of the day anyway.

Question, Mike Donis, I saw in another post here in the Vegas section that you mentioned you don't use Vegas. What'cha doing in here? Looking to make a switch from another NLE?! :-)

[Jive]

Envision is right, there is no way to get better rez on a DVD other than encoding at higher bitrates. However, as your source is of potentially much higher quality than a DVD could produce, you might want to check into the possibility of them having the means to accept your work in another format.

For instance, if they're using a normal projector, it may be possible to simply connect a computer to the projector and play a higher resolution video file.

I would also just add that many (smaller) film festivals these days accept films on DVD, and if the encode is good, then it looks fairly decent.

Also, since it's on your computer, you could always dump it out to miniDV or similar format. That'll definitely be better than DVD.

[Mike_Donis]

I'm actually having fun with Premiere Pro :P

But I figure I'll check the other forums from time to time - can't hurt, right?