ratio and format for animation

[Mike.]

Hi,

i"m really new to animation.

a client asked me to do one. its meant to be showed to clients who would want to buy appartements. this will probabily be integrated in a website, znd dhoxed to clients on a tv.

Question : which image format should i go for ? same for image ratio.

for the moment, i calculate in HD (1280*720) but i wonder if it's usefull, and if the ratio is ok.

 

Thanks

[Jim Mann]

which image format should i go for ? same for image ratio.

for the moment, i calculate in HD (1280*720) but i wonder if it's usefull, and if the ratio is ok.

 

Thanks

 

If it is going to be shown on HD capable TV then 1280 x 720 will look good, but not as good as full HD at 1920 x 1080. The two HD sizes and SD widescreen share a 16:9 image aspect ratio which works well for interiors. However, any form of HD is going to take a lot longer to render than standard definition (SD) TV. If the biggest it is ever going to be shown is SD, then you would be better focusing your rendering resources on producing a widescreen SD version at 720x576 pixels (it displays at 1024x576 because of the pixel aspect ratio).

 

Are you going to be using any editing or compositing software like Premiere or After Effects?

 

Jim

[Mike.]

Thanks for the answer.

yes i am going to use After Effects for comp.

sorry, but what is "SD" for ? (i told you i was a noob at animation )

can PAL(720*576) ratio and format be big enough to show with video projector and normal TV ? because you're right, my renders would take a lot less time with this format. i'll stick to hd for the moment.

 

thanks

[Jim Mann]

Thanks for the answer.

yes i am going to use After Effects for comp.

sorry, but what is "SD" for ? (i told you i was a noob at animation )

can PAL(720*576) ratio and format be big enough to show with video projector and normal TV ? because you're right, my renders would take a lot less time with this format. i'll stick to hd for the moment.

 

thanks

 

PAL is normal TV, usually referred to as SD or Standard Definition. You need to find out what definition your projector goes up to. If it can't do even cheap HD (1280 x 720) then you really would be wasting your time rendering to that size. On a decent projector or SD TV, a well rendered, well encoded 720x576 animation can still look fabulous.

 

If you haven't done an animation before then you are going to come up against errors you won't have expected. I would recommend sticking with SD and giving yourself a chance to correct errors in time.

 

Other considerations are going to be file sizes, storage capacity and media/playback. Good practice is to render out uncompressed stills but this is going to take up lots of space. There is nothing worse than setting up a batch of overnight renders only to come back the next morning and find that they stalled at 3 am because you ran out of disk space. On top of this, you need to consider how the animation is going to be played. With SD you can make a rock solid reliable DVD. HD is going to need Blu-ray or a server of some sort (this could be a laptop, a pc or even a PS3) but it will need to be powerful enough to play without stuttering or jumping. Blu-ray hasn't been as easy to create as DVD so far in my experience. With Encore CS3 it has been a complete pig to do.

 

Do you know what the specs for the display and the media are going to be?

 

Jim

[Mike.]

Thank you for your help Jim. really.

speaking about the final display's specs, i couldn't be precise, as the client doesn't know anything. he works for a housing builder, and only said me that he wants "a dvd to show the project". When i first told him about small format, he looked a bit annoyed, and wanted bigger renders. but i suspect that's only because he paied for the animation, and thus, has the impression that it is a scam if the renders are too small. and, as i am kind of a noob to anim, i couldn't be persuasive enough to impose my point of view.

i'm seeing him this afternoon. i'll talk to him about that. because you're right, he will certainly ask me for modifications. and the HD format takes ages to render compared to classic PAL.

 

Thanks again.

 

by the way, what format and compression codec would you advise me to render the sequences in after effects ? (or would you leave the sequences uncompressed ?)

[Jim Mann]

Providing SD renders isn't scamming anybody and they certainly aren't small format. Relative to HD or a large format print image they might appear small looking if you show them as stills but they will look great on a large screen as a DVD. Besides, DVD is SD. HD in any format would be HD-DVD or Blu-ray. I expect your client hasn't ever complained about teh loss of fidelity on any of the DVD's he watches at home.

 

Tell him the SD widescreen is actually 1024 wide and only send him stretched renders if you send him stills - it displays as 1024 on screen as your media player should compensate for the pixel aspect ratio which had you render at 720 wide.

 

As for codecs, it depends on your end media and what is comapatible with that. Evryone has their preferences, I prefer Quicktimes using Sorensen 3 or H264. The compression on H264 is really good and you can convert to a good mp4 using quicktime pro and play the animation directly on your PS3. You will need compression of some sort. Uncompressed is going to be huge...but only compress at the end, render using uncompressed stills and keep the quality in as long as possible.

 

Jim

[Mike.]

Thanks again Jim.

but i have some difficulty to understand the thing transforming SD into 1024 wide.

do you mean that if i render in PAL 720*576, square pixels, the result in display will be 1024 wide ??

[Jim Mann]

Thanks again Jim.

but i have some difficulty to understand the thing transforming SD into 1024 wide.

do you mean that if i render in PAL 720*576, square pixels, the result in display will be 1024 wide ??

 

Yes and No. In practice, your pixel will always be square but in TV land you get non-square pixels. You must set your render size to 720 x 576 and ensure that your pixel aspect ratio is set to 1.42 - it's actually 1.422 recurring but 1.42 will do for now. You can check this by dividing 1024 by 720. Your rendered square pixels will contain info on a region approx 1.42 pixels wide and will looked squashed along the width. When played on PAL TV via a DVD, the image will be stretched back into the correct proportions.

 

I don't know what package you are rendering with, nor how you intend to play the animation so can only provide so much guidance, this is all pretty fundamental stuff and is going to be described better in other sources. As you will also find out, I am missing out loads of detail but you don't have any footage yet.

 

Jim