Digital Workshop

I managed to work this out and thought it might help someone else!

I'm making an ident for the opening of my clients new building. Usually this would be done in After Effects or something but our editor has his workbook full, so it came down to me to do it in Opus.

Problem is my PC outputs a 4:3 resolution and feeds this to the plasma - I made the publication 1024 x 576 which is a 16:9 ratio.

Problem is that you get black bars top and bottom of the screen -

the plasma receives the signal as 4:3 and when put to 16:9 still has the black bars and the publication is stretched and thinned out!

Solution.. Set the publication to go full screen - enable resize vertically to 768! The publication looks squashed when seen on a 4:3 screen - but on the plasma it stretches back out to the right size..

Craig,

I too have had to resort to this trick ... not in Opus, but it worked much the same way.

I had to develop a looping presentation for display on 16:9 plasmas at a trade show and I used the dreaded PowerPoint (you use the tool you think will do what you want the easiest and best.) and created the initial program at a 16:9 aspect ratio. I then resized the presentation to a 4:3 size and saved it.

Looked right odd on the screen of the laptop playing it, but wonderful when the plasmas pulled it back out to 16:9.

May not have to do that any more since we picked up a laptop just for trade show use that has a native 16:9 screen.

Goo dto hear about successful projects.

It is now my time to do an Opus presentation for a 16:9 LCD display. The above tips and information are golden - Thanks!

Since I do not have a 16:9 display here to test on, and it is a rather large project, would I be well served to purchase a widescreen LCD computer monitor (as a 2nd display)?

Is the aspect ratio of widescreen computer displays the same as 16:9 broadcast displays?

Finally, if the client wants the same content as a PC (4:3 aspect ratio) presentation - would I have to resize / recreate the entire project?

Sincere thanks for any information,
Bill