A 3000 x3000 image has the same number of pixels at 300 dpi as it does at 72 dpi. The difference ends up being that a printer prints more fine detail when it's told to display 300 dots of ink within an inch of space than when it's told to display 72 dots of ink within an inch of space. For that matter, a 768 x 432 animation has the same number of pixels whether it's 300 dpi or 72 dpi. It might be displayed differently on the monitor, but the monitor is still working with the same number of pixels. Obviously, if the monitor is displaying more pixels per inch, the graphic will look sharper. However computer monitors can show different resolutions - 640 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, etc. TVs, on the other hand, have a fixed resolution. BTW, Silver, I did some checking on the 16:9 thing Friday and finished up just now. My boss said that when he'd done the 16:9 widescreen DVDs, he'd set up the graphics like it said in our Sonic DVD Burner manual. I looked in the manual and there's a table entitled "DVD-compliant source picture resolution." It lists 720 x 480 and 704 x 480 as the appropriate NTSC picture resolutions for both 16:9 and 4:3 Aspect Ratio DVDs. I just looked at my Adobe After Effects presets and there's one called "NTSC DV Widescreen." It's also 720 x 480. That doesn't make sense to me. I'm guessing that something in the settings must adapt the display to look 16:9. The pixels sure don't equal that. Hopefully someone will come along who knows the technical detail on that. As I said in the email, I've never messed with 16:9. I also did an experiment with After Effects. I created a 300 x 300 square. I saved a copy at 72 dpi and one at 300 dpi. I imported the copies into After Effects into a standard 720 x 480 composition. They both displayed at exactly the same size on the screen. Since the output is fixed, After Effects will have to compute the resizing of the 300 dpi version each frame that it renders. The output will look the same. Thus, I don't think the 300 dpi for video buys you any quality in the end product. It looks like you would end up adding calculations (and thus render time) to any post production, rendering, or DVD encoding you do. I've always done my animations and stuff for video at 72 dpi. FWIW, I've never seen any video software that gave you a choice to change the dpi at all. All of it that I've used - Avid Media Composers, Avid Express, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects - operates at 72 dpi.

Before they made me they broke the mold!
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