Render settings for widescreen WMV file

Cliff Etzel wrote on 8/22/2007, 5:13 PM
I have a client who wants to project a video I just finished onto a 50" HD tv. My project is Standard Def widescreen and they will attaching a computer to the monitor for playing the final video (Project I completed will be shown to the BOD of the company).

I'm a little confused on rendering out a WMV file that will retain the proper widescreen aspect ratio. I tried rendering out in x64 Windows Media Encoder, but the final result rendered like 640x480 (squished) when viewed on my computer monitor with WMP 10

What settings do I set to make sure the file renders correctly for display on an HD tv??? Should I render to a different format altogether instead of Windows Media???

Cliff Etzel
bluprojekt

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 8/22/2007, 6:42 PM
Windows Media Player 11 is the first version i've noticed that maintains WMV aspect ratios properly Version 10 was kinda hit or miss. Because of this, i always rendered WMV files with square pixels. For 480 line 16:9 you could use something like 856x480 with a PAR of 1.0. This isn't exactly right as he correct size would be 853.333, but the dimensions have to be multiples of 8, so 856 is the closest size.

If the bitrate is high enough, i think MPEG2 looks better than WMV. However, i still have the same issues with PAR in older versions of media player, so i'd still render with square pixels.

The other alternative is to use DVD playback software on an MPEG file. Something like PowerDVD will play back an MPEG file in widescreen aspect properly even if it doesn't have square pixels.
Cliff Etzel wrote on 8/23/2007, 9:15 AM
I have quit using Windows Media almost altogether except for low rez reviews for clients. Having settled on Flash Video via Brightcove for web distribution via their publishpod has made it easy for me to get things done. I took your advice and made a MPEG 2 file for the client to download so that I removed any issues that would arise from Windows Media player not accurately recognizing the PAR of the SD widescreen file.

Thanks,

Cliff Etzel
bluprojekt