Portrait Disply Nightmare!
by Clayton Light
on
Dec 4, 2007 at 7:02:53 pm
Okay here's a mind bender...
I've been assigned the task to create a presentation for CES for a major company. The product is a portable media player. It has a 320x240 display. Normally you would turn it on it's side to view video. They are making an oversized prop of the device for the show. They will be placing an NEC 4020 LCD Information Display inside the prop for the screen. This display's native resolution is 1366x786 (WXGA.)
They will be turning the display on it's side (portrait) to place it inside the prop and they need the content to be produced so that the presentation displays only at the upper portion to simulate the 4x3 aspect display of the device. The botttom of the screen will be a black rectangle.
To make things even more complicated, for legal reasons it can't be HD. So here's the problem... How do I create the presentation in 4x3 portrait so that I can then turn it sideways, and place it in a 16x9 (if that's the right thing to do) anamorphic comp so that it will play back correctly (from the internal DVD player of a laptop) in the visible area of the prop, and I can then re-purpose the presentation by scaling it down into a 320x240 comp (portrait) so that it will play on the actual device!
Re: Portrait Display Nightmare! by Dave LaRonde on Dec 4, 2007 at 7:40:07 pm
[Clayton Light]"How do I create the presentation in 4x3 portrait so that I can then turn it sideways, and place it in a 16x9 (if that's the right thing to do) anamorphic comp so that it will play back correctly (from the internal DVD player of a laptop) in the visible area of the prop"
Your limiting factor is the DVD Player.
Find out RIGHT NOW if this laptop DVD player is capable of playing standard-definition 16x9 DVDs. The monitor's resolution doesn't matter one bit if the resolution of the DVD player is the 720x480 of SD anamorphic. That one factor will drive everything else you do.
Re: Portrait Display Nightmare! by Darby Edelen on Dec 4, 2007 at 8:39:05 pm
Your limiting factor actually isn't the DVD drive, it's whatever DVD software you choose to use to display the DVD. The information on the DVD will be read by the drive as long as it's not a bad burn and the disc is compatible with the drive (i.e. not a +RW disc in a -R drive)... as far as the drive is concerned, data is just data. It's just important that whatever emulator you use is able to interpret the Video Data on the DVD correctly as 16:9 Anamorphic.
I can't think of any DVD Player Software that wouldn't support 16:9 video off the top of my head, and if there is one then the developers should be shot =)
Darby Edelen Designer Left Coast Digital Santa Cruz, CA
Re: Portrait Display Nightmare! by Darby Edelen on Dec 4, 2007 at 8:57:55 pm
[Dave LaRonde]"I was thinking that there may be some laptop out there with an HD DVD or Blu-Ray player in it... a totally different kettle of fish from SD DVDs."
Ah, I see...
Well, as far as I understand it the only computers with HD-DVD drives in them at this point are Toshibas (self-promotion I guess, god bless an open market) and that they should be able to read standard DVDs as well.
I'm entirely unsure on Blu-Ray drives, I know that they are out there... waiting... lurking.
Darby Edelen Designer Left Coast Digital Santa Cruz, CA
Re: Portrait Display Nightmare! by Dave LaRonde on Dec 4, 2007 at 8:40:42 pm
Well, 720x480 anamorphic is the size and pixel aspect ratio at which you make SD DVD's.
It's standard definition. Plus you're using only one end of this 16x9 picture, which means it will be lower resolution! Rest assured, it would NOT be HD. Not even close.
If it is indeed an SD DVD player, do the work at 480x360, square pixels. It's 4x3, and it's all the resolution you could hope for in this project. Then when done, put that work into a comp created by using AE's DV Widescreen comp preset. It's precisely the same resolution and screen aspect ratio as 720x480 anamorphic. AE is really good about handling varying pixel aspect ratios properly, so don't obsess about it.
Then it's a simple matter of rotating the original 4x3 comp by 90 degrees, and putting it at the appropriate end of the new 16x9 comp.
Oh, and by the way: find out which end of this 16x9 screen will be up. It might matter greatly to the people putting the display together. You'd hate to render out your work and have it on the wrong end!
Or you can CYA and make two DVD's, one with the work at either end.
Re: Portrait Disply Nightmare! by Darby Edelen on Dec 4, 2007 at 8:34:36 pm
I'm assuming that you meant you're working with a 1366x768 display (16:9) and not a 1366x786 display (which would leave some letterboxing if you tried to display a widescreen DVD at fullscreen).
With that assumption in place, I would also like to assume that you are planning your output for a Widescreen NTSC Video DVD. Is that correct?
If all of these assumptions are correct I would recommend first creating an NTSC DV Widescreen composition (we'll call this the 'Render Comp'), then creating a composition with NTSC DV Widescreen Square Pixel attributes, only with the horizontal and vertical resolutions inverted (let's call this the 'Working Comp').
Now place your Working Comp in your Render Comp and rotate it -90
