Because I was rendering something in Carrara that was supposed to be square, and because I was using Adobe Illustrator material and stuff from Photoshop, I stumbled upon te subject of non-square pixels. I can not get my head around it: do I have to make a render that is distorted horizontally (stretched) to compensate for the non-square pixels on a tv-screen, or do I make a non-square pixel rendering that, well, just has non-square pixels, like, 'under the hood'? In paint programs you can stretch your art that is supposed to be 720x576 (PAL size) to 768x576, so it will look good on TV. If I use square pixels in this dimensions, I think I do not have to check the box. There is an option, under the render options, that says just that, non-square pixels. I used the value I saw in After Effects and Final Cut Express, 1,07. And when I import it in one of these programs, I interpret it as being non-square pixeled. On my computer monitor this looks like it is not okay, but I suppose it will work out on tv, will it? Has anybody experience with this kind of stuff? If I make the right adjustments in Carrara (or any other app), on importing in After Effects or Final Cut, do I interpret the document as having non-square pixels, or does it get compensated twice then...? Normally I work for print, so I am a bit confused. As you might have noticed...

Computers use square pixels, TV has rectangular pixels, and depending on the system you are using, PAL, NTSC, 16x9 or 4x3 the shape changes. Prepare to have your head explode with maths and have a look at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/branding/picturesize.shtml I have found that different bits of TV software e.g. Premier, Final Cut Pro,Discreet Flame and Quantels Edit Box all do different things to to incoming "computer graphics". I normally use 768x576 for PAL 4x3 pictures and 1024x 576 for PAL 16x9 widescreen. But you could try making one frame with a large circle on it. Then importing that and see how distorted it looks on TV. Groucho

What I've learned is to render your original image in the correct ratio on the computer. Let your final editing software do the strething. The final image will be stretched to the TV so if you originally rendered it in 4X3 ratio to start with, don't worry about it later. -Kix

Thanks guys. I will see what I end up doing... The client logotype has a circle in it, so I can act on that. Thanks!

Here's what we do at our station... anything we create in Photoshop is 720 x 540. Then, when we save our files we re-size them to 720 x 486 for air in NTSC. When needing to output to DV - create in 720 x 534 and save at 720 x 480. Chuck

We have PAL here, but the same modus is the best way, I found out. Thanks Chuck

Just out of curiousity. Are the Theatre wide screens the same rectangle aspect as a Cinema screen or is the Cinema wider still? Is 16X9 the standard Theatre wide screen size?

Don't know if this will answer your question Zekaric, but here's an interesting article I found when researching the proper size to render my short film for widescreen. http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/aspectratios/widescreenorama.html