Best format for 1920 x 1080 trade show monitor

Chanimal wrote on 9/15/2008, 10:57 AM

I am creating a video that will be displayed on a 42" HD 1920 x 1080 monitor at a trade show. I do not have a blue ray DVD player or recorder. The panel (LG) has a VGA in, but the resolution is not this high. I am thinking an SVHS video out from a video card, using Windows Media Player. One of my previous videos for a different trade show used this format.

I tried to render to 1920 x 1080 with Windows Media Video format, but I ended up with massive rendering problems (my shadows would turn on and off at will and the screen was blinking). So, I tried a 1440 x 1080 template. It is rendering great.

Question, is 1440 x 1080 rectangular pixels the same dimensions as a 1920 x 1080 square pixels? Is this the best approach considering the rendering problems.

How would you show off this kind of HD video with this kind of monitor?

Thanks,

Ted

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 9/15/2008, 11:33 AM

I'd figure out your render problem. Outputting SVideo to a 1080 display will look horrible. WMV or MPEG from HDD will be the best option, outputting over component, VGA, or DVI, based on our fairly deep experience.

Chanimal wrote on 9/17/2008, 2:42 AM

Thanks.

This still didn't answer the square or rectangular pixel question. Any recommendations.

Robert W wrote on 9/17/2008, 3:06 AM

I would render the 1440 x 1080 version as a banker and then see if you can resolve the issues on the 1920 x 1080 render. The 1440 version will not look as good as the 1920 version, but I doubt anybody will notice. I should not worry abotu the pixel ratio, it is not goig nto be an issue.

However, I woudl definitely use the VGA out over the S-video. If you are having issues with higher resolutions, have a look at your output frequency in the advanced display settings. If you have it set to 60hz you should be able to get at least 1440x1080. Toshiba screens can be a little fussy about this.

Also worth updating your video card drivers. You may find that new HD resolutions appear. In ATI Catalyst software there is a box which enables HD resolutions. I think Nvidia may add them automatically.

Good luck. Let us know if you need any more help or clarity on this.

Edit:

I am assuming that you do not have a DVI output on the machine you are going to display on. If you do have DVI, get a DVI->HDMI cable and use that.

An alternative may be to save your render to a DVD-r and get an XBOX 360 with recent firmware and use the build in media center to play it (allow I am not sure if they support looping/repeating videos).

farss wrote on 9/17/2008, 3:19 AM

I've fed 1920x1080 over HDMI into a Bravia.
Encoded to WMV @ 5Mb/sec straight out of Vegas.
Played back with a Mediagate HDD player, these little boxes are dirt cheap.
One caveat, my content was mostly graphics, if full motion video you might want to up the bitrate.
From my experience WMV and most codecs seem to have issues with non square pixels. Well it could be the playback device for all I know, either way sticking with square pixels avoids any problems.

Bob.

Robert W wrote on 9/17/2008, 3:29 AM

Shouldn't pixel ratio be irrelavent if you are rendering in 1920x1080 or 1440x1080? The pixel ratio is dictated by whatever ratio you need to fit the HD widescreen screen at those resolution (more or less).

farss wrote on 9/17/2008, 3:50 AM

In theory yes, in practice no.
If the playout device doesn't see the flag to tell it what the PAR is you can end up with letterboxing and skinny people.

Bob.

Robert W wrote on 9/17/2008, 5:29 AM

Ah, yes, i didn't think of that.

Either way, it should not affect the actual rendered output from a resolution and pixel content point of view, so the I would advise is to ensure the ratio is set correctly, which the Vegas presets should be for each resolution already.

Or I could be wrong :) Do you agree Bob?

craftech wrote on 9/18/2008, 3:43 AM

Bob,

The current MediaGate HDD player model is the MG-450HD. I assume you have the MG-350HD. As far as I know the only difference is that the newer model has HDMI out and uses SATA drives as opposed to DVI out and IDE drives on yours. No big deal.

1. What was your workflow to get HD video on the device from your EX1?

2. Did you have to color correct to make it look right coming out of the HDD player? You mentioned wmv (which darkens video in my experience).

3. Did you use a DVI to HDMI adapter to play it through the Sony Bravia?

John

farss wrote on 9/18/2008, 4:07 AM

I gotta stop buying so many gadgets, took me a while to find the thing!
Mine must be MG-450HD as it's got HDMI and I put a 250GB SATA disk in it.

1. Rendered to wmv, copied file via USB port.
2. Not for this project but it was mostly done in RGB as it was graphics. I have seen exactly the problem you mention though with wmv on another project and took Glenn's advise and converted vision from Studio RGB to Computer RGB.
3. No, just HDMI cable from Media Gate to Bravia.

Now I'd better be careful here because I'm pretty certain I've tested the MG with full 1920x1080 wmv however the last thing I used it for a client with I did at 720p as our Bravia only has a 720p panel.
I only used 5Mb/sec as what I was encoding was 2/3 mostly static graphics and 1/3 video and that was upscaled SD so not much motion. I would guess though the unit should cope with over 10mb/sec at the very least.

I have to honest and say while it's been ideal for what I bought it for it's not all good. The menus are a bit tardy to navigate with the remote. If you connect another device it can appear to lock up as it spends so much time coming to grips with the new device so a litle patience is required.

Bob.