| Frame format for Digital Video? [message #37424] |
Thu, 18 December 2003 05:20  |
Matt Wood
Messages: 2
Registered: January 2003
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Junior Member |
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I'm generating some scientific animations that will be edited for digital
video (NTSC standard). Can anyone please help me on what the pixel format
should be? I know NTSC uses interlaced video of 480x720, but am confused
about what format I should use for my IDL generated frames. I did a quck
google search, but didn't find anything (perhaps didn't chose key words
well).
Thanks for any help or pointers!
Matt Wood
(">wood@fit.edu)
www.astro.fit.edu/wood
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| Re: Frame format for Digital Video? [message #37470 is a reply to message #37424] |
Sun, 28 December 2003 21:43  |
Rick Towler
Messages: 821
Registered: August 1998
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Senior Member |
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"Matt Wood" wrote in message ...
> I'm generating some scientific animations that will be edited for digital
> video (NTSC standard). Can anyone please help me on what the pixel format
> should be? I know NTSC uses interlaced video of 480x720, but am confused
> about what format I should use for my IDL generated frames. I did a quck
> google search, but didn't find anything (perhaps didn't chose key words
> well).
It all depends on your editing package. In general you would do best with a
full frame (uncompressed) source file which you could edit in say Premier
and then encode to whatever your target requires. Your target of "Digital
Video" is a little vague (unless you literally mean DV).
The size of your frame depends on your target. 352x240 (VCD), 480x480
(SVCD), 720x480 (DVD), 640x480 (WMV, TV)... You'll probably want to set the
size of your frame in IDL based on your target. Most editing/encoding
programs allow you to crop/scale your output so you have a bit of wiggle
room but in general it is easier to get it right from the beginning.
How you choose to encode it also depends on your target. VCD uses the
MPEG-1 format, 1.15 mbits/sec fixed, SVCD uses MPEG-2 at 2.6 mbits/sec
variable. DVD 3-9 mbits/sec variable. I would guess that if it was for
broadcast that the encoded format wouldn't matter and full frame would be
best.
How to generate this source file? If you are using IDL on windows pick up
IDL2AVI (a windows only .dlm) from Ronn Kling's site: www.kilvarock.com.
Use it to output an uncompressed AVI. If you aren't using IDL on windows
but have access to a PC you can generate the frames as .png files and then
use a program like VideoMach (shareware) on the PC to stitch them together
as an uncompressed AVI. I'm sure there are similar programs available for
Mac. If you only have access to a unix box... go buy a cheap pc.
-Rick
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