What timeline do I use for SD output?

J

Jeremy7

Active member
I shot in 720p. The final video will be seen on 4:3 SD TV's. Do I edit on a 1280x720 timeline or a 720x480 timline?

Thanks!
 
What NLE are you using. Is your output going to be DVD? Do you want it to be regular 4:3, or 4:3 letterboxed?

Jason

Depending on your NLE, you should just be able to edit on a 720 timeline, and render to a standard 720x480 mpeg 2. Then when you burn to dvd with your authoring software (if you are outting to DVD) you can just burn that to DVD. The viewers DVD player will letterbox for the 4:3 tv, if it has to. If you shoot 24p, you can even burn your dvd as a 24p dvd (allowing you to put more space on the dvd) and the dvd player will automatically add the pulldown, if necessary as well. If you are not wanting letterbox, you will have to do that with your NLE, and how to do that will depend on your NLE
 
I am using Adobe premier 1.5. Here's my issue...

I have SD footage shot at 720x480 and HD footage shot in 720p. I would like everything to have a letterbox upon final output to DVD, so do I create a 720p timeline (1280x720) and edit both types of footage inside of it and export to dvd or do I create a 720x480 timeline and scale all my HD footage down to fit and then export to dvd?

I'm quite confused when it comes to mixing sd and hd footage.

Thanks for the help.
 
Sorry, I don't know anything about Premiere. Someone else will have to help you with that. I know it can be done, I just don't how picky (or not) premiere is about mixing formats on the same timeline, etc.

Jason
 
Just changing from 29.97fps to 24fps doesn't do squat to how much stuff you can put on the DVD. Capacity is determined solely by the bitrate you are using. Unless you change the bitrate as well, you are merely giving the encoder more bandwidth for each frame in the video, so you may get slightly better video than you would at 29.97fps because there are 20% fewer frames per second.
 
I've noticed from previous posts that this is about all the further it gets when the question arises about mixing HD and SD footage in premier.

Does anyone know?
 
I only chimed in because I wanted to correct a possible misconception. I don't use Premiere, the NLE I use (Edius) doesn't care one bit what the properties of the timeline are, whether I mix and match source formats or framerates, and what the final output target is -- it is completely format-agnostic.
 
THoff said:
Just changing from 29.97fps to 24fps doesn't do squat to how much stuff you can put on the DVD. Capacity is determined solely by the bitrate you are using. .
Click to expand...

Yes and no.

The length of the video in total minutes AND what bit rate is applied determines what can be encoded to DVD.

I think that's what you are referring to - as a point to clarify.
 
Yes, that's what I meant -- the bitrate per second (Kbps or Mbps) multiplied by the duration of the video (in seconds). The framerate is irrelevant.
 
Jeremy7 said:
I am using Adobe premier 1.5. Here's my issue...

I have SD footage shot at 720x480 and HD footage shot in 720p. I would like everything to have a letterbox upon final output to DVD, so do I create a 720p timeline (1280x720) and edit both types of footage inside of it and export to dvd or do I create a 720x480 timeline and scale all my HD footage down to fit and then export to dvd?

I'm quite confused when it comes to mixing sd and hd footage.

Thanks for the help.
Click to expand...

I recommend downconverting your 1280X720 to 720X480 and edit completely in SD.
 
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