Delivery of final product

S

sadude

Active member
I am geting close now to the stage where i need to start thinking about how i am going to present my documentary to broadcasters, sponsors and even private viewings.

I am worried about the aspect ratio settings when putting it onto DVD. Which is better:

1. Should i export my project as 4:3 onto the DVD and letterbox it or
2. Should i export my project as 16:9 onto DVD

Most people have no idea about setting their DVD player to allow wide screen so i am worried that they will have an image with cut off sides.

Also on a secondary note if i want to later put the program onto Blu Ray, What it the recommended file type i should save the vidoe as?
 
Personally I will always use 16:9. If people crop the sides off or squeeze the image they won't complain because they are not likely to know any better, however if you letterbox it the quality will drop for those with their hardware properly set up and they won't be impressed... If you create a letterboxed 4:3 image, when properly displayed on a 16:9 TV it will be both letterboxed and pillarboxed forcing people to use their TVs 'zoom' mode to fill their set...

For BR, the easier way is to shoot 1080 50i or 60i. If you shoot 1080p I think you have to use 24p which might make life difficult for you... (BR only supports 1080 24p) For file type, well your choice is MPG-2 or MPG-4, depends on your program's length and what size disc you want to use (single/double later)...
 
Another vote for anamorphic 16:9 - let the DVD player do the right thing.

Going 4:3 and squishing your video down to letterbox it? In Europe it's almost impossible to buy a 4:3 set these days, and those who have 4:3 and a DVD player don't know about aspect ratio - they just get the letterbox automatically.

The real battle is with those who have 16:9 Plasma/LCD screens and battle with badly setup (letterboxed? Assumed letterboxed?) DVDs and broadcasts that try to be all things to all people and usually get it wrong.

Go the route of every movie that goes to DVD - 16:9, let the DVD player do the letterboxing if it needs to.
 
Most widescreen Hollywood films are encoded with the 16:9 flag enabled. The PROPER way to encode a letterboxed movie is to use that flag. Non-anamorphic letterboxed footage bothers the crap out of me as a viewer because I have to zoom in on the picture to fill my HDTV up, thus down-rezzing the video.

If people don't know how to setup their DVDs properly, that's they're problem and they more than likely are used to seeing widescreen video improperly anyway. Broadcasters and people who screen stuff at private viewings will more than likely know what they are doing, settings-wise.

Just as important, please make sure to properly encode your DVD to take advantage of progressive encoding. That is, if you shot your documentary in 24p. If not, don't worry about it. Reason being is progressively encoded material looks much better through an HD upconversion player than does interlaced footage (or progressive footage that was encoded interlaced).
 
thank you for all your responses. I will go with 16:9. If someone has not set their dvd player correctly then they proberly won't expect anything is wrong lol.
 
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