Messages posted by Daydreamer

thank you thank you thank you for your help and your patience! SO appreciated...
Im going to start playing around with it now...thank you! talk to y'all later im sure :

Haaaaaaa you guys are awesome, thanks so much!
definitely going to get cracking on some experimental movies now. Your advice was top rate- I SINCERELY appreciate it.
(and you havent heard the last from me lol...)

oh hang on, i just thought of something else!!

my goal is to eventually produce movies about 25-30 minutes long, made up of many many little video clips. im working on a basic HP Pavilion laptop (i5). Is a half hour movie considered very long, and possibly too much for my computer to handle, or is that length normal for PD to produce and a basic laptop can manage it?

thank you warry and optodata!! things are beginning to get clearer...

1) can you clarify exactly what it means to produce to 4k vs HD? where would i see those options? i checked "produce" but i dont see them-did i miss it, or is it called something else that im not aware of?

2) also, what would be the ramification if i didnt realize certain clips were 4k, and I produced the movie to regular HD? is that still ok, or would the movie be affected?

3) and im clarifying here- (i got lost in some of the jargon, sorry)- if i produce a movie made of 4k videos to 4k, it can still be played on a non-4k device, correct?

4) aaaaaand- now i found out about "frames per second"! whaaaaat....apparently im supposed to set my movie's frames per second? and its supposed to match the frames per second of my video clips? (does it have to? what if different video clips have different fps?) where in PD do i have the option to set the fps? why am i reading recommendations to have it at 30 fps? or 29.9... can i ever set it "too high" or "too low" to be viewed properly, or is it just some extra detail that only professionals would care about?

5) is there anything else (technical/specs wise) that im not aware i need to set? so far ive got the movie's aspect ratio (which im thinking ill do to 16:9), the resolution, the format....now the fps....anything else??? lolll help!

thank you SO MUCH for your help. you guys here seriously rock.

Quote The starting point is: Please look at the aspect ratio’s like 16:9, 9:16, 4:3 all as the aspect ratio for the final result of your video. So the first thing to is, to define what kind of output video you want to make. Obviously YouTube “likes” 16:9 best. And nowadays most of the other showing devices (TV, computer screens etc.) use the same 16:9 ratio. If you want to make a video that has to look great on an cell phone, then 9:16 might be the best ratio. Once the output ratio has been chosen, all input video and images will have to fit into that ratio, either with side bars or with enhancing the material (see below).
So:

1) The setting can be considered as aesthetic, but also (see above) what may be the best fit for showing the video. You can either leave the bars at the side or at top and bottom alone, and thus respecting or showing the original input device (look at the old 8mm movies that are shown on the 16:9 TVs with side bars….). You can also decide to show the takes “full screen” and crop the input to make it fit the aspect ratio of your (output) video. The decision to crop may also depend on the quality of the input material (cropping enlarges the input and may also enlarge the poorness of the quality) and the subject (e.g. 4:3 movies may have essential information (a face, a sign) that you don’t want to drop while cropping). But remember you make the choices with the chosen output format in mind, not the input format.

2) If you decide to change the aspect ratio of your video after you have created the timeline, it is not entirely impossible that your output looks distorted. The might be ways to correct that, but the simplest approach is to redo the timeline after the ratio change. Better, as you might guess by now, is to define the output ratio before you start filling the timeline.

3) This question may have been answered in to above. Indeed 16:9 may be 1920x1080, which is the resolution of full HD TV screens and many computer screens. But the 4K aspect ratio is also 16:9 and the resolution of a 4K (TV or computer) screen is 3840x2160 4 times as much pixels). Each video (file) can only have one aspect ratio but also one resolution. But once you have defined the aspect ratio for your video, at production (output) time you still can select the resolution within that aspect ratio, e.g. with 16:9, 1920x1080 for HD TV, Blu-ray, or 720x576 for TV DVD, or 3840x2160 for 4K TVs. I think for the usage you mention 16:9 and 1920x1080 might be the best option. Maybe you want to do some testing before you define what to go for.
This testing is also important for the quality. Although PD enables you to select the ratio and the resolution, as mentioned above the quality is very much depending on the quality of your input material. 8mm video may not look so good in 16:9 4K:

Hope this helps a bit.

this was so helpful. thank you very much for taking the time to respond. i now see I really should choose the aspect ratio for my project beofre i do anything else.

so now, having read your reply, i have even more questions..

1) clarifying: Is there ever a time where a 16:9 project wouldnt be able to be viewed at all? I mean on most basic devices, such as youtube, desktop computers, laptops, TV screens, tablets and cell phones- can i assume that all those devices would be able to play a 16:9 movie?

2) also, when choosing the resolution, if I use 1920x1280 resolution for my project, will it play properly on all devices I just listed? I see you mentioned that a 4k TV or computer has a resolution of 3840x2160- does that mean that a movie with a resolution of 1920x1080 would not be able to be played on a 4K computer/TV? or just that it would play, but the 4k TV/computer is capable of handling even higher quality movies?

3) another question-as im playing around on PD, when i click produce, there are so many many options for selecting a file format!! and i did watch many tutorials, but they all just confused me further...maybe because im not familiar with all the lingo yet...if you had to suggest a file format for a 16:9 movie to play back on all TV screens, laptops, desktops, youtube, tablets and cellphones- what would you chose? im hearing a lot of AVI, MPEG-2, and H.264 or H.265- but i cant understand whats best!! im going crazy here..

4) and one more thing i just thought of- powerdirector alerted me that some of my video clips were taken in 4K. I believe that means a higher quality or higher definition (????) video that is taken through most smartphones nowadays? (again, this is my google research-please corect me if im wrong!). So if a video is a 4K video, do I NEED to choose a certain file/resolution? or will it technically work with all, just like my other video clips?

im sorry if some of my questions dont make sense...hopefully one day i'll be a maven, answering some other newbies questions....until then...thank you in advance to you and anyone who helps me!

Hey everyone, I'm just starting out with powerdirector 17. (Ive dabbled in video editting before, but Im a complete newbie when it comes to the technical specs, producing, etc).
Ive been educating myself the past few days through a lot of youtube tutorials and through searching the forum here-but I still need help understanding the implications of the different aspect ratios Im dealing with.

My situation: I want to create a few full length movies that are made up of many little video clips. the problem is, after hearing a lot about "aspect ratio" i read up a a bit on it and discovered that my video clips are a combination of 16:9, 9:16 and 4:3. With regard to the 4:3 videos- I can likely make one movie with all of the 4:3 videos, so that should be ok. But my problem is with the rest-I can not split them in to two groups and make each its own movie. I will need to make a movie with a combination of 16:9 and 9:16 clips.

Here are my questions:

1) is the problem of using 16:9 videos in a movie project that is set to 9:16 (or vice versa) purely aesthetic? is the problem only that I will see black bars on the sides of the videos, or is there a more seious problem with doing that? Like, if im ok with seeing bars, can i just leave it alone?

2) I learned that I can change the aspect ratio of a selected clip while in powerdirector, and i experimented with that. My project was set to 16:9 (because i read that youtube needs that, and i know i will want to be able to export to youtube) and when i changed the 9:16 clip to 16:9, it got all distorted. So what's the point of changing it? Am i missing something obvious? I did notice that when i changed the 4:3 clip to 16:9 it hardly distorted it...I'd love some clarity on this!

3) Assuming i end up leaving the clips as a mixture of 16:9 and 9:16, how do i export it? I am VERY new to this and really not understanding the lingo, despite watching many tutorials, each more confusing than the next...is the resolution supposed to "match" the aspect ratio? someone told me that 1920x1080 is 16:9...is that true? how do i know what resolution and all to choose, if i have 2 different aspect ratios in my movie? or does it just depend on what my movie project itself was set to? My objective is to be able to store this movie on youtube, vimeo, and a memory stick- and to be able to play it back on all computers and screens.

Thank you in advance!

(im sorry about the newbie questions-i know you all are professionals and im a bit embarassed that i even asked all this, i dont want to waste your time....but i did try to educate myself but now im just stuck....just a desperate mom trying to make cool home movies for her kids and stuff like that...thank you!!)