Quote: Hi again everyone. Geoff here.

I'm trying to make an endless loop DVD to play in a showroom on a widescreen TV.

I have a few questions...

Can a use 1980 by 1020 .mov file (outputted from my Avid Media Composer) as the source--is that too large a file for the application?
If I output a 1280 by 720, I fear I will lose quality (30fps...best quality)

THANKS AS ALWAYS
Geoff

Whoa ! A standard DVD is 720 by 470 (in the US) regardless of what you start with.

If you want high definition, you could make an AVCHD project and disc. Your 20 minutes would fit. You would need a blu ray player or a computer equipped with a bue ray optical drive and a program to play it in high definition.

You could make a video file of what you want but it would have to play off a computer or a TV that will play high definition off a USB thumb drive.

Let us know if you need more information. .
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BoilerPlate: To posters who ask for help -- it is nice to thank the volunteers who try to answer your questions !
Anything I post unless stated with a reference is my personal opinion.

Hi Steve...thanks very much for your reply. I never knew that. I assumed that the bigger the incoming file would increase the quality of DVD playback.

I'll let you know when I'm successful.

Probably sooner than later, I'll need to start upgrading to Blu ray.

Thanks again, Geoff

Geoff, I'm a newbie too, but I have a blu ray player (and now a writer!!), but before I got the blu ray writer I used to make AVCHD dvd's on the dvd writer in my old computer, and just PLAY them on the blu ray player on the TV. They looked absolutely amazing. You'll be amazed at the difference the upscale can make, even though it's still only a dvd, the difference is remarkable. The original files still need to be the higher resolution to make the massive difference, but any file..played through a blu ray player, upscales it just a bit...I don't know why, or how, but yes, you need a blu ray player, and maybe later a writer instead of the dvd writer. It's just fantastic.

Re the resolution... you would be best to right click on the original file to find the properties, then the actual original resolution of the file. Probably 720 x 576 (or something like that as you're prob in USA) and also take note of the mbps (or whatever they are,...I told you I'm a newbie!!). But then, when you output it, you need to find the closest match to that. I learned this on another thread (you may find it, something about being 'jittery') The thing is, you can't produce (or output) a resolution higher than the footage was originally taken in. So if you took dvd style, mpeg2 footage at 720 x 576 25i resolution, at 8mbps, then try to find the same or as similar as you can. That will enable the program to produce it in as close as possible to your original.
You can't 'upscale' footage, except I believe some TVs and blu ray players can make things appear a little better than they are.

Just my take, I believe I'm right...I imagine someone will correct me if I'm not. This may be the reason your footage looks 'slow', maybe not slow but juddery, or jittery or almost like bits are missing.

good luck,
it's a BIG learning curve,
Jenny. Jenny