Best all round format for rendering

[chrisbitz]

I have a 3D guy producing me a sequence, and I want to be able to output it in 3 formats:

PAL
NTSC
Web

I can't pay him 3 times to render different versions, so considering PAL is 25 fps, NTSC is 29.97 FPS, and web is say, 320x240, and PAL and NTSC are different pixel sizes...

What format should I ask for? I guess the best of all worlds is 720x576, non interlaced @ 29.97 fps, and I can do the alternatives in Premiere?

What would you guys suggest? (as mentioned earlier, I know the best would be to get him to render all 3 versions, but thats not possible.)

Many thanks! :-)

Chris.

[danlefeb]

Just a step down from having him render it would be to have him give you the source files and render them out yourself in seperate dimensions. But that'd require you to have the 3D app.

Apart from that, I'm assuming by "sequence" you're going to have him render you out an image sequence, correct? If that's the case, the frame rate isn't a huge issue as its all just a sequence of images and not set in an actual movie file. You can import your sequence into AE/Premiere, whatever and adjust the frame rate. The main thing you'd have to worry about is the aspect ratio. (0.9 for NTSC DV and 1.066 for PAL DV) I don't know how the shot was set up, but its always a good thing to have the end in mind - so your 3D guy should set up the shot knowing that they're going to be done on NTSC and PAL and should be able to send you some test shots in both resolutions so you know how they'll look on each (you don't want your focus to be on something that looks great on NTSC but is off the action safe on PAL). With that in mind, I'd suggest the final render be something with plenty of room - maybe 1024 or something like that so you can have some extra room around the action safe to play with.

Just remember that you can always size things down real easily, but you can't create new pixels easily. Render huge and size down.

[chrisbitz]

Thansk for the speedy response, danlefeb - although framerate and speed of the film isn't critical, I guess the real question I'm asking is should I get him to render it @ 29.97fps and convert it to 25, or the other way round? or even (if it's possible) get him to render it without fields and I can interlace it afterwards or something?

Thanks again...

[LaLiLuLeLo]

I'm guessin, but if you have more frames, you should be able to knock them off...

[danlefeb]

You're right LaLiLuLeLo. You can knock frames out easier than you can add frames in from nothing. However, just keep in mind that your can get off very easily when playing with frame rates. In other words, if you have 300 frames (roughly 10 seconds of regular NTSC), and you translate it to PAL, that's about 12 seconds of PAL video (25 fps). If your program drops out frames here and there to make it the correct timing, your audio/lip sync could fall out of place if you're not careful. Most programs will watch that for you on a single movie clip but if you haven't edited together an image sequence with an audio track yet - then you may have to do that manually. Its just something to keep in mind.

Here's a link that might help you in your conversion needs:
http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Articles/PALvsNTSC/PALvsNTSC.asp