Digital Workshop

I want to make a pub to be run on a (as yet unpurchased) large LCD screen. Possibley 24" or 30".

I assume I set the chapter size to the native resolution of the screen when I know what it is.

But- I want to run video in a player on the screen. A typical 720x576 video would look pretty paltry on the screen. Does anyone know what happens to the video when I resize the player object to perhaps twice that size? Does the video get re-rendered at that new size when I publish or will it simply display poorly?
Or will it look OK...?
All hints gratefully accepted.
Mac

Mac --

I've used MPEG-1 videos in most of my OPUS Pubs with great success on standard definittion computers (4x3 format). I normally do NOT stretch the video in any way. I've also been successful in using MPEG-2 (DVD quality) videos with CD-ROM Pubs. The playing computer MUST be capable of playing a DVD (which most new computers are) otherwise -- there's nothing showing. MPEG-2 is native 720x520 screen size so you'll have much greater resolution of your video. The file size is proportionately MUCH larger. When you stretch it to completely fill the screen (1024x768) , there's only minimal distortion. I normally DO NOT use Fit to Size in my OPUS Pubs.

If you plan on filling the entire screen, you'll want to shoot your video in the 16x9 format to better accomodate the newer, wide screen TVs and computer monitors. You may get black bars at the top and bottom of the screen depending on your video editing software when it makes the MPEG-2 file.

If all you want to do is run DVD quality video, I'd simply edit the video into a standard DVD -- skipping OPUS.

Thanks for replying.
The idea is to have a busy Opus page running, so animated text for example or animated signage, plus logos etc. One part of the screen is given over to a video object, but hopefully larger than 720x576.
Can I assume that the video in that frame will look OK? I know it will look good if I run it from a DVD player outside of Opus, I'm just not sure what Opus does to it during the publish process.
Of course I will be able to find out when I get the monitor, but I'm supposed to sound knowledgeable while I make my pitch

Mac --

Like you, I've been using OPUS for a long time, so I know OPUS likes to do one thing at a time. If you've got a large, busy screen with animated text, transitions, graphic backgrounds, photos, AND a large video -- all trying to run at once, you may experience problems (like suttering, failure to operate, etc.), especially if you are trying to run from a CD-ROM. You'll have better success running from a large, de-fragmented hard drive on a XP computer with lots of RAM and a very fast clock speed plus a high MB, fast graphics card. I don't know if running OPUS Panels, where you have each different "feature" in a separate screen panel (Chapter) will help or hurt you. I've always worked at keeping video screens very simple. I've had complicated Pages take longer to initially load/display than simple text Pages. I've had problems with large MPEG files in MultiFrames doing strange things.

You probably should build a test sample before commiting too much to your client.

That's what my wife says about me, at which point I normally realise that I'd forgotten to do it.

Fred is the video king, but I'll add that turning off exclusive helps run multiple 'animated' features at once. The resolution issue isn't straightforward and will also depend on the resolution of the monitor / TV and bitrate of the encoding; quality of the source etc.

You can always try encoding your clip at half that size and checking the distortion on a small monitor if you want to get a better idea before the purchase of the larger screen. It's probably also worth remembering, that if the bitrate is high enough that your current resolution is DVD standard and most people with old CRTs won't have TVs bigger than 30" and DVDs play clearly on these.

Mack

Thanks Mack!!!!

I never use the "Exclusive" feature in OPUS. For those not familar with it -- If you set an Object's Transition to be "Exclusive" then NOTHING else will happen until that Transition has completed. To me, Exclusive does more harm than good...

Also, I'm sure you're aware, the physical size of a TV or computer screen (in inches) is not directly related to screen resolution. You can take an old 640x480 screen resolution Pub and display it on a 60" TV, likewise, you can take a 1024x768 screen resolution Pub and display it on a 10" monitor. What Macavi is mentioning is to find out what the screen resolution of your TV/Monitor is, then do a Custom resolution setting (Chapter Publication Properties -- for each Chapter) to avoid stretching or compressing an OPUS Publication.

thanks, I think I'm getting it.
I know how to size my publication, I just wanted confirmation that within that page it doesn't matter how big I make the video, it will still behave the same as if it were playing the video component from a standalone DVD player where the size of the screen is immaterial.

It's probably obvious but I just wanted to understand.

(I guess I was wondering whether Opus was re-rendering the video at a new resolution to fit the selected video object size, but obviously not.)
Thanks for the feedback.
Mac

If you set the video to "rendered" mode, that's exactly what it'll do and performance may suffer. However if you use "on top" or "chroma key", the video is rendered in its original size, and your graphics card will do its own clever stretching to make it fit whatever size the output is. This is what happens with media player, or any other video player.

thank you.