Just finished a C3 animation for a DVD menu. Having only worked in still/print media, I have no clue how to best render for output. I need suggestions on size, settings and options for 4:3 aspect ratio DVD animation. I don't necessarily need to know how to make it efficient (only 11 seconds) but how to make it the best quality possible. Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks.

DVD is 720x480 @ 72dpi @ 29.97fps (or 30fps usually works fine.) These settings can be found in the Render Room>Output Properties tab. As far as type of file to render to, it depends on the application(s) that you are using to create your DVD. If you have access to a video editing program, then I would suggest outputting to Sequencial TIFs, and placing them in their own folder on your data drive. (Not recommended to be the System drive. I.E. the D: drive not the C: on the PC.) There will be a lot of files with the same name, just with different numbers on the end of each telling what frame they are. This way you can avoid any compression until you output to MPEG2 from your timeline. Most editing programs can input sequencial files as 1 frame each and then you can edit any of your video frames in a window or whatever. Some say that field rendering is prefered if you are using NTSC. I disagree. Interlaced video is an abomination of man. :> The DVD player will take care of that when it does its playback. If you do want to go that route, set your frame rate to 60fps. Since interlacing is every other scan line per field, 2 fields per frame = 60 fields per second. Again, if you go that route, your editing program will take care of the interpretation of the interlacing fields. I hope this hasn't been to much extra stuff, I beleive that information is better then ignorance. :> Good luck!

I agree with bluetone, render out a TIF sequence and use that in an editing programme until you are ready to make your MPEG2. Rendering fields will make you animation look much smoother, and any quick movements will not 'strobe' as much. If you happen to be in the UK or most of Europe or Australia then the picture size should be 720x576 and 25 frames a second (50fps if you must do fields) if you are doing a 4x3 shaped frame. Here in the UK, and for most widescreen DVDs the picture ratio is 16x9 which equates to a pixel size of 1024x 576 (Oh God! I can see this is going to get complicated)but then the editing programme should squash it up to 4x3 to make a 16x9 full hight anamorphic picture. If you really must know more then look at www.mill.co.uk/widescreen . Hope this helps, good luck.