Using 720x402 for PAL Widescreen help

#1

I have an animation project that needs to convert to PAL widescreen. Our original render gave us 720x486 at 24fps and .91 pixel aspect ration, with hardmasking the black bars into the image. Resulting in a 720x402 image with no hardmasking.

My question is this. What kind of image degradation would be seen in converting the 720x486 hardmasked image into a PAL widescreen image with 1.4 pixel aspect ratio and 25fps? The final product will be for PAL DVD release - widescreen format for both 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios.

The follow up is. Would it be worth the time and money to re-render the entire animation at a different resolution and frame rate? The animation is roughly 80 min long. Or would the authoring house be able to make this conversion with little noticeable image quality loss?

Thank you in advance. Much help is needed on this topic in general and as much information as possible is appreciated.

#2

Umm I’m not too much of an expert on these sort of things, but is there a certain reason why it can’t be rendered with square pixels at at 16:9 ( say…at like 720 x 405 res) and then reframed via clipping afterwards to a 4:3 aspect? Seems like the more logical thing to do…

Maybe reposting this question in the compositing and editing section might give you some better responses. :wink:

#3

You would need to upscale it to 720*576 and apply a 1,4587 pixel aspect ratio.
Degradation shouldn’t be that much a problem, I’ve seen DV-Pal blowups to 2K and it was OK. Not great, but OK.

Or would the authoring house be able to make this conversion with little noticeable image quality loss?
I would try that first.

#4

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