Newbie questions re. rendering please!

[lightbox]

I have been persuaded to make a short movie using my son's computer set up which is fantastic - but he's swanning off on a gap year and I am floundering about without a clue!

He has just finished his degree and used premiere pro.

I need to put together a 4 minute stop motion animation film that can be projected via a memory stick ( downloaded onto laptop) or direct from a dvd, and another version that can be shown online.

The film has been shot on jpg stills from a Nikon DSLR so the resolution of the frames is good - 2464 x 1632 ( I think.)

The film needs very little in the way of editing, simply all the frames on the timeline as a title sequence is incorporated into the film.

Now comes the tricky bit - I never realised there were so many different output options and haven't a clue which to select.

I'm in the UK so it's PAL I presume and I think it is 25 fps ( even though the film is shot at 10 or 12 frames per every second ???) but other than that I am stumped.

Please can someone advise which settings will give high quality results for both online and projected versions.

Many thanks in advance.

[Midnight Blue]

I don't use Premier but I'm sure there will be some preset tempates for example for the DVD version you need PAL, 25fps, 720x576 size, with a bit rate around 8-9Mbs per second. If that helps.

For the YouTube version you can render it in HD so the size can be 1920 x 1080 and up the bit rate to around 20Mbs per second. If your projector can play HD materiel use the YouTube version if not use the DVD version.

Hope this helps.

[lightbox]

Thanks for the terrific answer - not sure I fully understand it so if I may push a bit further ....

Is the YouTube quality better than dvd quality?

I assumed that online footage wouldn't be as good as that played directly from the laptop or dvd?

Video room101 question - what does the bitrate refer to please, and what difference does it make?

Last one (for now!!!) approx how large a file size is a 4 minute film likey to take up done toe youtube hd way?

cheers

[Midnight Blue]

Yes, the YouTube version is High Def. You can't burn HD onto a standard DVD. That doesn't mean the DVD won't look good as the YouTube version because YouTube will reduce the quality when it is doing it's magic. Also as your source footage is good quality so it will produce a nice standard def DVD.

The bit rate is the amount of information the video can tell the computer about per second about the image. Generally the larger the bit rate the better the image quality will be but there are some limitations when setting the bit rate, for example you can't normally go above 9.8Mb per second on a standard DVD as the DVD player might not be able to cope with all the info that the video is giving it. That is why some older computers might struggle playing HD video, this is not such a problem these days.

The size of the file is a variable thing depending on the the image size, the bitrates etc. I would estimate a 4 min HD video in a compressed format would be about 1Gb file size.

[lightbox]

Thank you for such a comprehensive reply.

I now realise that I am completely out of my depth here!

I will try both ways - youtube and dvd and hopefully judge the results and decide then if I should pass the buck to someone who can do it properly.

Thanks again.

[lightbox]

Many thankd for the advice, that looks great for a first try.

Another couple of questions if I may...

My images are all 2464px x 1632px which means I lose the top and bottom of the frames if I go for 1920 x 1080.

Being a photographer and not a video guy I have always been taught to fill the frame and now I have lost some important bits in some frames.

Is there a way around this or do I just have to put up with it?

Sometimes the top part doesn't matter as the important stuff is at the bottom of the frame - could I just resize those images?

Thanks.

[Midnight Blue]

The important point about sizing in video is keeping the aspect ratio, so you can re size, crop, move around the image but you have to keep, in your case 16:9 aspect ratio, otherwise you will get black bars top and bottom (letter box) or on either side.

I'm not a Premier user so I can't talk you through how to do it but I know you can crop to the right dimensions and then move to the parts of the image you want.

[Marc Peters]

2464 by 1632 will give you a square shape. 1920 by 1080 gives a rectangle - to fill in the whole screen, you'll need to crop horizontally. However, before you do this, resize all your images to 2160 x 1080, and then crop the top and / or bottom pixels.

Edit: I do all of this in an image editing app, and not Premiere.

Edit 2: Ignore my previous awful maths, resize to 1920 x 1272.

[lightbox]

2464 by 1632 will give you a square shape. 1920 by 1080 gives a rectangle - to fill in the whole screen, you'll need to crop horizontally. However, before you do this, resize all your images to 2160 x 1080, and then crop the top and / or bottom pixels.

Edit: I do all of this in an image editing app, and not Premiere.

Edit 2: Ignore my previous awful maths, resize to 1920 x 1272.

Help... Now I am totally lost!

If Youtube HD is 1920 by 1080, if I crop to 1920 by 1272 will I not still lose stuff at the top and/or bottom?

Thanks

[Marc Peters]

The first step is to resize to the maximum possible frame dimension whilst maintaining the aspect ratio (1920 x 1272) - this just makes your image smaller, but there are the same number of horizontal pixels. Then you crop 192 pixels from the top / bottom.