[Mik]

Right.

I have to design a series of movies for a client that will play off a dvd onto a plasma screen for a new bar / restaurant.

The plasma screen is set up at 16:9 and refreshes at 60hrtz.

I was planning on doing the movies in flash and exporting a series of 16 quicktime movies.

There are a number of things I am unsure about:

1. So is a ratio of 16:9 is the same as 640px to 360px
2. My version of flash MX2004 pro and MX2004 will publish nothing other than flash version 5 quicktime moves - Is this right.
3. Colour performancea nd reproduction? Any tips
4. How do plasma screens handle fonts etc

Does anyone know of any pitfalls, things to look out for etc.

thanks

Mike

[sleepingfish]

1. Yes

9 / 16 = 0.5625

0.5625 x 640 = 360

Unfortunately that's where my answers stop, but one out of four's better than none.

[Brown]

2. i thought it was to do with which version of qt you have installed on your machine. maybe it makes a difference if you upgrade and pay for a proper version of qt? all guesses but hopefull highly educated.

[Mik]

yes i was thinking it was to do with with which version of qt but i have the latest version of it but i think it needs to be the "paid" version

thanks guys.

[mark]

Originally Posted by JapanMik

1. So is a ratio of 16:9 is the same as 640px to 360px
2. My version of flash MX2004 pro and MX2004 will publish nothing other than flash version 5 quicktime moves - Is this right.
3. Colour performancea nd reproduction? Any tips
4. How do plasma screens handle fonts etc

Does anyone know of any pitfalls, things to look out for etc.

Whenever I've done stuff for plasma you need to ensure that you have a video card capable of displaying a 16-9 ratio (there's loads out there these days and there pretty cheap).

So, to answer your questions:

1. yup the ratio is right
2. Why not just output in flash? If not then you'll have control over the pc environment so it doesn't matter which version of quicktime is used.
3. Far as I know the colour performance should be akin to an lcd monitor but with far better contrast/brighness/viewing angle properties. In the past I've hired in plasma screens to test designs/presentations.
4. Plasmas tend to handle fonts fine as it's all dependent on resolution - if your outputting via a pc/mac then the fonts should display correctly/cleanly/crisply provided your ratio is correct and there's not stretching/squashing going on. If you're outputting as composite video then you have far lower resolution and need to stick with larger sans-serif fontage (video interpolation tends not to like the tails on serif fonts because it scans for two 'fields' and thus becomes unsure of what to display and you end up with very noticable flicker on finer details).

Hope this helps ya.

[mark]

bollocks - completely missed what you were saying about dvd - My advice would be import your movies into after effects/final cut pro and then output the finished movies to dvd. I'm pretty sure you can bring flash into either of those (but don't quote me)

If it looks fine on your tv it'll look fine on plasma.

I'll check with my mate Mick as he's done loads of this type of thing.

[Mik]

cheers mark.,

the reason they have to be 'mov' outputted is that the client in his great wisdom wants to put them together in windowas media player and change the order now and then of the 16 slides.

[tomson]

might be worth finding out what res the plasma screen is - xga, vga etc - as obviously the higher the resolution the better the display capabilities. Xga displays small text far better than vga

[Mik]

cheers lads.
not just a bunch of useless layabouts are you.

They havent even purchased them yet.

[Mik]

ok continued - if any can be arsed

the client has turned the plasma screen on end (vertical mount)

so:

1. Can i just set the flash to 450x800
2. will the videocard / screen understanding that it has been flipped and display the content accordingly.

I know silly questions but I am learning the ropes here.
Thanks

[Mik]

oh and how the buggery does the content scale? -
\cant use fs commands in flash. any clues graetfully received.


oh and why doesnt after effetcs have a 16;9 composition setting.
its friday afternoon sob

[tomson]

Originally Posted by JapanMik

oh and how the buggery does the content scale? -
\cant use fs commands in flash. any clues graetfully received.


oh and why doesnt after effetcs have a 16;9 composition setting.
its friday afternoon sob

Woooah cowboy.
Talk us through what you'd done and whats happening/not happening.

Btw doesnt AE have a 720x405 setting?

And are you burning an anamorphic DVD? If so, in using what?

[Mik]

Originally Posted by tomson

Woooah cowboy.
Talk us through what you'd done and whats happening/not happening.

Btw doesnt AE have a 720x405 setting?

And are you burning an anamorphic DVD? If so, in using what?

haha cheers T

as yet i have nothing.

basically i just want to set up flash correctly (easy enough)
then find the correct setting in AE (ie frame rate, comp size etc) (there is no sound to worry about) to import a series of flash QT movs and export avi's.

Btw doesnt AE have a 720x405 setting?

I was going to use a ratio of 450wide 800 high. Is your setting right T - it differs from general consenus.

We were concerned as to how the plasma screen will display the content as its been rotated.

oh and what is anamorphic DVD?
Thanks

[Stickman]

Google:

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...reenorama.html
http://gregl.net/videophile/anamorphic.htm
http://www.dvdweb.co.uk/information/anamorphic.htm

But it's friday, for gawd's sake.

[tomson]

hmmm maybe its 720x480 i'm thinking of then... who knows

as for your rotated screen - it sounds like a real pain in the arse. Might be easier to author a dvd as normal but with the content turned 90degrees... but then you gotta be sure the plasma screen is tuned in the same orientation, otherwise the content will appear upside down. hmmm

If you were playing from a pc you could probably use summut like powerstrip or some other custom resolution app to flip it... or a suitable portrait stylee vid card.

Ha ha good luck

[Mik]

yer bastard

thanks though

[daveganley]

The first problem:
Computer screens have square pixels, TV screens have rectangler ones

So setup flash as 640X480 with 30fps. Remember the there are safe zones for TV screens type and action.

Create your content and don't publish but EXPORT as quicktime. When you export set size to 720X480 this will give you rectangler pixels.

Bring export QT file into AE and apply video effect BROADCAST COLOURS and REDUCE INTERLACE FLICKER

Job done

Have fun

PS. If you don't have AE then be careful with your colours in flash. Attached is a PNG file that you can import into flash and use as a colour picker - the colours on it are broadcast safe

[mark]

Good one Dave.

This bears out a lot of what a motion graphics mate said, except it makes more sense

Out of interest, when you export at the stretched width I assume that this fcuks up your ratios and everything looks stretched?? Is there some technique to prevent this. Also will 30fps work for PAL playback?

I know a bit about video, but more as an operator and sound guy rather than editor and am interested to know more about prepping flash for video.

[WickedKlown]

I have done alot of Flash work for presentations on TV screens.
From what i have seen. yes, your on the correct path. Although The one thing that i have never done with my movies is put them into a Quicktime format?? What is the pourpous for doing that?? what are the advatages rather than just pulling it out to a fullscreen EXE file?

[rasmus]

Well, I assume the plasma screen is a PAL-machine.
The full/maximum resolution of PAL is 768x576 (also known as "625/50"), and that gives you aaaalmost square pixel ratio. But if you stick to another resolution, let's say 720x576 (also known as "D1"), then you will have a pixel-distortion (horisontal stretching) with a multiplier of ~1.094. So you will have to render the material a bit squezed together. A circle, wich look round on the screen, will be oval on the final PAL-apparature.
If you're using software like Final Cut Pro, Commotion or After Effects, there is a setting wich will let you specify the pixel aspect ratio of the final medium. Then, you can work in any resolution you want. But my advice is to do this in full resolution. 768x576, square-pixel aspect ratio, that is. But you should crop it down to 768x432. (for 16/9 or 1.7778:1) Then a circle on screen will be a circle on the plasma. IF it uses standard PAL, non-square pixel aspect ratio.

Second note; when exporting as Quicktime from Flash, you want to render a "real" movie, I assume. Just choosing Quicktime will make a movie with the acctual swf-file embedded in it, making it quite hard to import it into your editor software. what you need to do on Mac is to choose "quicktime movie" (not quicktime) and on PC you'll have to go with AVI. Choose a lossless codec and you wont lose any pixels on the way.

You should aslo think about the framerate. PAL is 25 fps or 50 interlaced frames per second. NTSC is 30 fps or 60 interlaced fps. So stick to 25 or 30 fps thruout all of the material. Or else you will get big problems.

Plasmas and all kind of low-resolution and interpolating screens tend to make fonts and sharp stuff blurry. But the standard antialias in flash shouldn't be any problem for sizes above 16pt.

There is also a "action-safe" and "title-safe" area of the image. In other words, when producing any material for TVs, cinema, etc, you never put any important stuff close to the edges of the frame. Keep it in about 10-20% of the screen width or height. It's a classic mistake to place a title to far down and afterwards notice it's been cut off by some tv, monitor or projector. Most movie editing applications has guides called "action-safe" and "title-safe" built in. To enable it is a good idéa.