Thursday, October 09, 2008

DVD Studio Pro: Leaving 4x3 behind for good

Scott Bates | 10/09- 09:31 AM

16x9 lovin

With the prevelance of flat screens and digital transition, it’s time to stop worrying about 4x3. That statement might seem a bit lame, as many of us have already migrated to HD work where 4x3 SD really isn’t our concern any more. However, when it comes time to distribute our work, documentaries, shorts, bah’mistzva’s, whatever they may be, the good old DVD is still the most feasible means of distribution. The mandatory AACS fees for Blu-ray will keep legitiamte distribuion on BD out of reach for 95% of us (oh how I miss the, HD-DVD). So until the cost of blank BD media drops into the realm of sanity (likely still 18-24 months away) at which point you could distribute duplicated discs which dont require AACS, you are left bring your HD project back down to an SD world.

It’s happened a number of times now for me in the past year where I’ve had my head in HD and then sit down to design some nice DVD menus for a project and forget all about 4x3 title safe. So I’ve started forcing “16x9, 16x9 Letterbox” only for my DVDSP projects. For the feature this is not a big deal at all, but for menus and subtitles it has an impact.

When a 16x9 project is displayed as native 16x9, the DVD player typically just spits out the 720x480 (or 720x576 for you PAL kids) anamorphic pixels unadultered, and lets your TV stretch out the composited image for so it appears correctly. However, in letterbox mode, the player will vertically squeeze the video by 25% and center it in the 480 frame. The issue arises that this squeeze is done to the video layer, not the composited image, so it happens before any graphics were involved. So if you have button overlays or subtitles, the video underneath them just shifted and thus they no longer line up in the correct position any more.

Monday, September 29, 2008

I Decide: Anatomy of a No-Budget HD Spot

Art Adams | 09/29- 02:35 PM

Wherein a great group of people come together for a good cause

This was the first project shot for California’s No on Prop 8 campaign. In an attempt to reach out to young voters I recruited my cousin Catherine, and her best friend Austin, to record an appeal for youth to get up and vote down Prop 8. They’re both politically active and immediately said “yes” to the project.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

AJA + Adobe = Great High-End Workflows

Dennis Radeke | 09/20- 03:44 PM

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have the privilege of getting to work with high-end workflows all of the time.  I go from everything to DV to Film 4K and everything in between, but clearly SD and compressed HD workflows predominate what we do. However, I have to say that I’ve been really intruiged with what AJA offers for Adobe products - all that you would expect and a whole bunch extra.  Read on to get all the details.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

On Artbeats.com: Article on Type Basics

Chris and Trish Meyer | 09/17- 08:10 PM

Things your mother didn’t tell you about creating nice text.

Every month, we write a Tips N Tricks article for our friends at Artbeats.com. This month we wrote a basic introduction to using text - including a few simple rules of typography that many miss, plus a more subjective discussion about choosing the right fonts for a job. (This is obviously a companion for the piece on Font Resources that we just posted here on PVC.)

Click here to download a PDF of “Type Basics” from Artbeats.com.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Adobe CS4 Just Around the Corner

Richard Harrington | 09/14- 09:57 PM

Want to find out everything new in Adobe Creative Suite 4? Trust me… there’s some really cool things coming. Adobe has an invitation out to view their Web broadcast on September 23rd. But you do need to go to the sign-up page at www.adobe.com/go/somethingbrilliant.

By the way… I am going to be releasing something very special on the 23rd as well as a “thank you” to all my viewers. Be sure to stick around and keep an eye out. 

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Offline To Online For An HD Project

Kevin P. McAuliffe | 09/06- 09:32 PM

After you get over completing your first “online”, you will be finishing all your projects in record time.

I thought that for this next article, I would take a look at a growing trend for editors these days, and that is the “One Man Shop”.  What I mean by that is that these days, with systems coming down in price, independent business owners/editors are wearing many hats, and one of those hats is that of the offline/online editor.  Let’s take a look at how an editor can offline a 1080i HD project, and then carry it through to the online.

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