16:9?

Lake Films

Lake Films

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Hey. I'm going to be shooting a few shorts over the summer and was wondering if it would be better for me to shoot in 16:9 or 4:3? Most likely the movies will go straight to DVD. Any advice? Thanks!
 
meh, keep it in 4x3 and letterbox it, that way the framed area has a slight better resolution.

Unless you film in squeeze mode and uprezz it later on.
 
Well, either way you'll be loosing picture resolution. Shooting 4x3 and then matting it in post will give you the same results as shooting in letterbox mode. The only advantage to shooting 4x3 and matting in post is that you will have more margin on the top and bottom to adjust the framing of your shots.
 
if you shoot letterbox you're stuck with that shot. where if you shoot 4x3 you have more framing options. kinda repeating master151.
 
master151 said:
Well, either way you'll be loosing picture resolution. Shooting 4x3 and then matting it in post will give you the same results as shooting in letterbox mode. The only advantage to shooting 4x3 and matting in post is that you will have more margin on the top and bottom to adjust the framing of your shots.
Click to expand...

Huh? you won't lose any resolution if you shoot in 4x3 and letterbox in post. All the letterbox does is throw a black bar OVER the top and bottom of the frame... but what's seen is still full quality. Right??
 
This may be a stupid question but, when using premiere pro 1.5, I know how to add the black bars, I just don't know how big? they should be? How do you know that you are adding the correct 16:9 ratio?

-logan
 
rcbrown23 said:
Huh? you won't lose any resolution if you shoot in 4x3 and letterbox in post. All the letterbox does is throw a black bar OVER the top and bottom of the frame... but what's seen is still full quality. Right??
Click to expand...

what he meant to say is you will lose pixels, not physical resolution. (as your project will still be 720x480)
 
rcbrown23 said:
Huh? you won't lose any resolution if you shoot in 4x3 and letterbox in post. All the letterbox does is throw a black bar OVER the top and bottom of the frame... but what's seen is still full quality. Right??
Click to expand...

As someone else said, by resolution I meant the number of pixels being used.

If you shoot full frame, then throw black bars on the top and bottom in post, the end result is a picture with fewer horizontal lines of video information. The black bars are wasted pixels.
 
hatsoff2halford said:
This may be a stupid question but, when using premiere pro 1.5, I know how to add the black bars, I just don't know how big? they should be? How do you know that you are adding the correct 16:9 ratio?

-logan
Click to expand...

There might be a matte/letterbox generator in Premier, but this works too...

1. Create a new document in Photoshop using the DV NTSC 720x480 preset, and change the background to transparent.

2. Drag a guide down to the vertical center of the canvas.

3. Use the select tool with a fixed aspect ratio of 1.85:1 to draw a rectangle taking up the full width of the canvas, and center it vertically using the guide.

4. Invert the selection and fill with black.

5. Save as a non-layered PNG.

6. Import into your editing program and throw it on top as your matte.
 
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