Camera settings for widescreen

[alper]

Hello
we are 5 students working on a 3d animation project.
we have decided that the animation should be widescreen (PAL 16:9) and would like to know what camerasettings to use.
as i understand it, in renderglobals the pixel aspect ration should be 1.422 and image 1.778 and resolution 720x576.
(this is anamorphic, yes?)
what confuses me is the camera settings, because when we render, it doesnt look all right.
could someone tell me how the camera settings should be, or point me to a place where i can read about it?

thanks in advance
/G Nilsson

[pixho]

Hi,

mmh, if you want tyo render in PAL 16/9, the output resolution should be 1024/576 which gives you a 1.778 pixel ratio.
Now, your camera's film aspect ratio should be the ame as the pixel ratio (i.e. 1.78), and all should be ok.

Hope this helps...

Emmanuel

Emmanuel Campin
Lighting & shading TD
www.pixho.com

[alper]

thanks for the quick answer
on my dv camera, and also on dvds, the resolution of widescreen video is 720x576, and it would be nice if we could get the same resolution here (to save rendertime and disk space if nothing else)

/G Nilsson

[pixho]

then render in 720*405 to match the PAL format in width...

Emmanuel

Emmanuel Campin
Lighting & shading TD
www.pixho.com

[alper]

hello
but then we dont get full resolution in height on a widescreen tv. its anamorphic 720x576 we are looking for.
/G Nilsson

[teacup]

I don't exactly understand what do you mean with "it doesn't look correct when rendered"? Does it look squeezed horizontally? If so, everything is ok: you must keep in mind that a widescreen image has a pixel aspect ratio of 1.42, which is different from the pixel aspect ratio of your computer monitor or of any other 4/3 screen. This is why everything looks thinner. You only have two ways of seeing your widescreen image correctly: A) using a 16/9 screen (like a plasma monitor i.e.) with 720x576 1.777 aspect ratio 1.420 pixel aspect ratio images. Or: using a 4/3 screen (a normal TV screen) with 720x405 1.777 aspect ratio 1 pixel aspect ratio rendered frames. The final output in this case will show two black horizontal bands on the top and bottom of your screen, in order to fit inside the 720x576 PAL standard. Emmanuel's suggestion of rendering at 1024x576 1.777 aspect ratio and 1 pixel aspect ratio is similar than my solution: it only requires more disk space and an easy scaling operation in post. But it could help retaining crisper details... I hope I correctly understood the problem.

Stefano Oggeri
Technical director

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