What resolution in Moho for NTSC Widescreen DVD output?

LittleFenris · Post by **LittleFenris** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 7:35 pm

I would like to know what resolution I need to do my project in Moho so its compatible with NTSC Widescreen (16:9) format. I will be putting the final animation on DVD and would like it to be in the same widescreen format you see when you buy a widescreen hollywood movie DVD. When I go into After Effects it shows ia resolution of 720x480 but a 1.2 pixel ratio, and I don't know what that would translate to for square pixels in Moho.

Thanks for any help.

ralphrubbish · Post by **ralphrubbish** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 8:08 pm

this will probably have what you need.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/bran ... size.shtml

tinytoad · Post by **tinytoad** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 11:23 pm

Short answer: 960x540, then output at 720x486 for the DVD.

Long answer: let me know if you want all the gory details

jorgy · Post by **jorgy** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 11:49 pm

ralphrubbish wrote:this will probably have what you need.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/bran ... size.shtml

Is this link PAL only?

ralphrubbish · Post by **ralphrubbish** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 1:32 am

yep, Pal is a little different so that won't work.

there are plent of pages about this on the net if you google it.

Snudddy · Post by **Snudddy** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 11:21 am

How will a 800x600 resolution look like on a tv screen?
I know there is some software that can rescale the final output for dvd.
Anyway is it good to work with the animation in 800x600?

Im using quicktime when rendering with sorensen 3 (which is very good quality)

Thankful for some answers from experienced users!

LittleFenris · Post by **LittleFenris** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 5:58 pm

Snudddy wrote:How will a 800x600 resolution look like on a tv screen?
Thankful for some answers from experienced users!

Thats the reason I was asking what size I should do the original file in so it looks right on the DVD. Computers use square pixels and TVs use rectangles so you need to know what the ratio should be for whatever you are exporting to. 800x600 isn't going to be right for any TV output, not matter if its PAL or NTSC. I have encoded many NTSC DVDs with a 4:3 ratio, but never a 16:9 NTSC DVD. I've never worked with any widescreen footage. I know what true HDTV resolution is but current DVDs can't handle the throughput of that resolution so I can't do the MoHo animation at that res, but I at least wanted the widescreen format you see on most hollywood DVDs these days.

Snudddy · Post by **Snudddy** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 8:02 pm

720x576 is probabby the best working resolution if your not going to watch on widescreen but on ordinary tv.

Well that is anyhow what I can say after reading lots of pages about resolution. Still Im a bit unsure...

Hmm....

Im no good at this. I just started to get into it since I wanted to know how to get my animation to tv screen.

LittleFenris · Post by **LittleFenris** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 1:16 am

Honestly I've done plenty of animations for US TV broadcast in After Effects just using the same resolution as TV...720x486 (in the US and Japan) and it looks fine. The only time you will ever notice is if you have a perfect circle. If you don't do the graphics at 720x540 then scale them down to 720x486 the perfect circle won't be a perfect circle on TV. What ends up happening is you do the circle graphics in 720x540 size, then you import to Premiere or Final Cut Pro (with your project set at the NTSC resolution of 720x486) and the circle will look squashed. This is ok because when you watch that on a TV the circle will be perfect again because of the difference in the square (computer) vs. rectangle (TV) pixels.

Snudddy · Post by **Snudddy** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 8:41 am

Why is there a resolution change between PAL and NTSC?

Im from Europe therefore I was thinking PAL resolution setting which is 720 x 576 but NTSC is 720 x 540?? or 720 x 480??

Sorry Im confused about this..

I seriously hope there is good programs that can fix this when the animation is done. I want to be able to do dvd for both NTSC and PAL.

rylleman · Post by **rylleman** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 11:23 am

Snudddy wrote: I seriously hope there is good programs that can fix this when the animation is done. I want to be able to do dvd for both NTSC and PAL.

Resolution isn't the only issue. You also got different framerates, 25 frames per second for PAL and 29,98 for NTSC. But there are conversion tools, it may be a bit tricky, but you can convert between the two.

cribble · Post by **cribble** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 5:36 pm

Lost Marble, do you think you could post something about this in the FAQ forum? Theres always alot of confusion about this and thought it would be best to have one post suming up PAL and NTSC settings.

LittleFenris · Post by **LittleFenris** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 9:44 pm

Snudddy wrote:Im from Europe therefore I was thinking PAL resolution setting which is 720 x 576 but NTSC is 720 x 540?? or 720 x 480??

PAL is 720 x 576 and NTSC is 720x486 (NTSC D1) or 720x480 (NTSC DV/DVD). I just don't know what resolution to do my animation at because computer monitors use square pixels vs. a TVs rectangular pixels so you have to do the animation on the computer at a different resolution because of the different pixel aspect ratio of TV vs PC. Programs like After Effects aren't helping me figure it out any because the preset says 720x480 for the resolution of a widescreen pic, but with a 1:2 pixel ratio instead. I think the way a widescreen DVD works right now is they just squash the original film into the 720x480 resolution then the TV or DVD player stretches it back out if you have a widescreen TV (or like black bars when you watch widescreen on your fullscreen TV). It's all really confusing. I just need to know what res to do the initial animation at so its in the proper widescreen format.

jeff · Post by **jeff** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:30 pm

I can't help advise on what frame rate to use for the USA as I am only used to European TV, but there is a very simple answer when it comes to resolution for widescreen in Moho: use any resolution you want that is 16 x 9!
So you could work at, say, 800 by 450 pixels or any other combination you want where the width in pixels divided by 1.7777... = the height in pixels. I generally work in 720 x 405. You get the idea.

When you have finished all your animation and before you have output the finished images, tell Moho to resize the project up to 1024 x 576. (File > Project Settings).

Once you have upped the resolution of your project, render it to your local hard disk as PNGs or other bitmap type.

Finally, you need to change these bitmaps to the desired size needed for broadcast or DVD. In Europe we resize to 720 x 576 pixels and in the USA, as I understand it, you use 720 x 480 (or 486?) and this will give you your animation correctly squashed for so-called "anamorphic". But you can't do this in Moho itself. I would recommend you download the Irfanview program (please note, it's only free for personal non commercial use...). http://www.irfanview.com/

It includes batch processing options; you load your rendered Moho bitmap files, then use the Advanced option to re-size your animation and you're done.

Sounds a lot worse than it is. Hope I haven't misled due to ignorance on my part, but I am fairly sure this is all correct.

Regarding frame rate, don't forget that Moho will also let you change the timing throughout a project, so if you have screwed up, it's very simple to unscrew.

Jeff

LittleFenris · Post by **LittleFenris** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 11:11 pm

jeff wrote:I can't help advise on what frame rate to use for the USA as I am only used to European TV, but there is a very simple answer when it comes to resolution for widescreen in Moho: use any resolution you want that is 16 x 9!
So you could work at, say, 800 by 450 pixels or any other combination you want where the width in pixels divided by 1.7777... = the height in pixels. I generally work in 720 x 405. You get the idea.

Jeff

Thanks for the advice Jeff.

I actually have my default Moho settings at 720x405 so I was at least on the right track there. I use After Effects 6.5 Pro and Premiere 1.5 Pro so no worries on the editing software. I've just never dealt with widescreen DVDs before, only fullscreen. I was told by a friend of mine that owns a studio in California, USA to do the animation at 720x405 as you suggested, then put it in a 720x486 project in After Effects (or whatever) for exporting to DVD. I'm going to give that a try tonight at home since I have a full version of moho now, plus I have a DVD burner and Encore DVD for authoring.