Comments

farss wrote on 6/25/2006, 6:05 AM
Well HDV is 16:9 and I only make 16:9 DVDs.
So one can capture the HDV as m2t, encode to the CF DI .avi, edit that to your hearts content and then render to the PAL or NTSC widescreen mpeg-2 template and author a 16:9 DVD.

This will playout as 16:9 to a 16:9 TV or for those not quite with it yet they can configure their DVD player to either letterbox or crop it to the 4:3 frame.

Bob.
stevemitch wrote on 6/25/2006, 6:26 AM
CF DI?
farss wrote on 6/25/2006, 6:34 AM
Cineform Digital Intermdiate.
Sorry not with my WniXP machine at the moment to give you the precise Render As name, shouldn't be too hard to work out though.

One tip with something new, test a small part through the whole process first.

Bob.
johnmeyer wrote on 6/25/2006, 8:26 AM
I asked similar questions when I first started doing this six months ago. After I got the answers, I posted my workflow in the following threads. Perhaps this will help:

HDV Questions

My workflow for HDV to SD projects
stevemitch wrote on 6/25/2006, 10:53 AM
Big help! Thanks. What if I'm using only HDV footage? Is there still a need for the mask? And what would the 16X9 picture look like on a 4:3 screen ?
farss wrote on 6/25/2006, 1:14 PM
A 16:9 picture on a 4:3 monitor will be squashed, think tall people etc.
However ALL DVD players are designed to correct for this by letterboxing the 16:9 frame into the 4:3 frame OR doing a centre cutout. The former means there's black bars top and bottom, the latter means the sides are cutoff.

The advantage of 16:9 is that it will look as good as it can on a HDTV, that's one reason why down here it's nigh impossible to sell 4:3 content, upscaling 4:3 SD to HD just doesn't cut it.

Bob.
johnmeyer wrote on 6/25/2006, 3:53 PM
As Bob says, the mask is only needed if you are delivering 4:3. Even in SD, you can still deliver 16:9, in which case, forget the mask.

In answer to the question whether you still need the mask when delivering 4:3, but ALL your footage is HDV, the answer is definitely YES. The purpose of the mask has nothing to do with mixing SD and HDV. It's real value is to let you still see the entire HDV frame, but be able to see what the 4:3 composition will look like. If you don't like the framing, you then use pan/crop to create your own camera moves, using the portions of the HDV frame that are in the gray area of the mask. I can't believe how much more professional my results have been and how many shots I have saved by doing the "camera moves" in post.

Finally, don't forget that if your final delivery is SD, you can zoom into HDV by a LOT, and still get full-res SD results.


stevemitch wrote on 6/25/2006, 5:43 PM
actually through a long series of experiments I have achieved my objective of my DVD looking letterboxed on a 4:3 screen and fullscreen on my HDTV(s). Thanks.,