Resizing for Avi?

[quickflicks]

It is recomended to use 1024X768 (4:3 aspect) but NTST has only 720X540 with the same aspect ratio.

Considerations:

If PTE reduces a jpg the picture must loose quality and in considerable amount specially if sharpening was applied to it which BTW should be done for any digitaly produced file resulting from a scan or a camera.

Should resizing and sharpening be done in an outside editor beforehand?

If the answer is yes then an other question arises; should one have two slide shows on a disk: one for computers the other for TV viewing for quality concerns or even three the other being for PAL?

Any input will be highly appreciated.

[Ken Cox]

With the advent of the avi feature, it is a whole lot easier to make your show for "TV" in the first place, then make same show with adjustments for computer and rename/saveas/create as.

make all your pict adj'ing before you put them into p2e, it is easy enough to change the picture, special settings etc, as building your show progresses

ken

[nickles]

Read my post here:

My PTE to DVD Method

I had the same resizing concern, and tried resizing to 640x480(NTSC size). I found little if any difference in quality, by resizing to 640x480. TV is not the same quality as what you see on your PC, not even HDTV achieves that quality.

TV pixels are different than PC pixels, very confusing. A PC(640x480) has square pixels and a DVD(720x480) has rectangular pixels. A standard TV tube has a 4x3 aspect ratio. The DVD player (decoder) stretches the 720x480 video to fit a 640x480 aspect. The way this is done causes 90% of the picture to be lost unless you zoom out the DVD player or put the TV in widscreen mode. I'm not very good at explaining this, but trust me, the technique I explain at the above post works very well for me.

I make a PC slideshow and a video(DVD) from the same PTE source photos at 1024x768. When making the video I check "fit to screen" and select 90% of screen to fit slide image with solid color black background. I then produce the PTE video. When you look at the final DVD on a PC it has a black border around it due to the 90%. But when the DVD player stretches it, it just fits the TV screen with no noticable border. If you don't put in the 90% part of your slide will not appear on your TV screen as it is effectively receiving a 90% crop from the DVD player.

Hope this isn't too confusing but try my technique...it works great on Windows 2000.

[nickles]

Regarding Aspect Ratio for Video, the following site covers it in depth...complex to understand...

A Quick Guide to Digital Video Resolution and Aspect Ratio Conversions

Maybe this will help or confuse....

[Ken Cox]

nickles

i added your link to

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums//index...E=02&f=4&t=1507

thanks

ken

[quickflicks]

Thanks Ken.

Good link nickles. Thank you.

Now I understand why your 90% works, but there is a better way described in the calculation provided on the entire site of the link given.

Is it necesary, no. If it works why fix it.

I posted this topic because I want to know and prevent mistakes down the line. Since my first show involves a lot of time in design and picture preparation. If I can design in a way that allows batch processing in Photoshop using actions I will be all set.

Studying the calculations given on this site I can design this way.

What it comes down to is: NTSC 4:3 601 standard is in reality 702X540. This is why 90% works.

In real good design it is better to resample and crop the original 720X540 to 702X540. This way there will be no pixelacion. Even if TV is worse than Comuter it is my understanding that every little bit helps specially if no much extra work is included.

There are three ways: First crop to 702X540 and lose the part on the sides. or fill in with black or do nothing and use your method.

Up to now I have only made a few trials in PTE to see how this program behaves and I must say very good.

I will use it for slide shows. I will mention that I also have Premiere 6.5.

[nickles]

Quickflicks:

A good way too detemine if your cropping proportions for a slide is right(aspect ratio) is as follows:

If your going to size your slide for making video at 702x540 (not quite 4/3) then make a pure white "test" slide that is 702x540. Draw a perfect black square that measures approximately 400x400 in the exact center of the white rectangular slide with a line width of approximately 5 pixles. Create a one minute slide show with this slide then create a PTE video for your NTSC TV. Play the video on your TV and measure the sides of the square with a ruler. If the sides are equal then your aspect ratio is perfect.

Get the concept? You could also do the same with a circle and see if it distorts to an elipse. When I developed my suggested technique, I created a 1024x768 white slide with a black border. Making the video at 90% display verified a near perfect fit on three different TVs, with none of the slide being cropped. This varies somewhat from TV to TV and is dependent on how well the CRT guns are aligned.

Another interesting note:

I use DV encoders by Pinnacle, and Panasonic as well as a M-JPEG encoder made by Morgan Multimedia for producing AVI files. For making MPEG-2 or MPEG-1 files from AVI, I predominately use the Cinema Craft encoder and sometimes TMpgenc. I also have encoders that come with NERO 6, Pinnacle Studio, and Roxio that I never use. If I make a true AVI before I encode into MPEG, I get jittery slides especially along horizontal lines with all AVI encoders execpt the Morgan. By going direct from PTE Video Encoder direct to the Cinema Craft mpeg encoder, I get highly stable and clear slideshows on my TV...in fact much better than I expected. This jitter must have something to do with the still picture. If I use the Morgan M-JEG and create a true AVI (select the Codec as custom in PTE) before I encode the MPEG I get reasonablly stable non-jittery slides but not as good as going direct to Mpeg with the PTE encoder. The DV encoders are terrible for stills but excellent for normal motion movies. I consider the Tempgenc and Cinemacraft encoders as equivalent in quality but the Cinemacraft is a little over twice as fast. I haven't figured the PTE Video Encoder, must be a pure frame server.

Wish you much success... I love using PTE....I'm no expert...just sharing my experiences....KEN

[quickflicks]

Thanks for this detailed explanation.

At this moment I am only design slides, but my postings are geared to reach the knowledge I need to produce good shows.

The program in itself is very easy. No problem with it.

The technical stuff before bringing a show into PTE and the Export are the more trickier issues.

I am on my way.