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Almost everyone you know owns a TV and a VCR. These ubiquitous bits of home entertainment gear are all that you need to view your latest movie production — because exporting your movie to videotape is pretty simple. Well, it's usually simple, especially if you have the right hardware. But even if all you have is a digital camcorder, sending your movie to videotape isn't very difficult.
Prepping your movie for TV playback
Televisions and computer monitors are very different. This means that the video that looks just peachy in the preview window of your editing software may not look all that great when it's viewed on a regular TV. Computer monitors and TVs differ in the following important ways:
- Color: Computer monitors and television screens generate colors differently. This means that colors that look fine on your computer may not look so hot when viewed on a TV.
- Pixel shape: Video images are made up of a grid of tiny little blocks called pixels. Pixels on computer monitors are square, but the pixels in TV images are slightly rectangular. Basically this means that some images that look okay on your computer may appear slightly stretched or squeezed on a TV. This usually isn't a problem for video that's captured from your camcorder, but still images and graphics that are generated on your computer could be a problem.
- Interlacing: TV video images are usually interlaced, whereas computer monitors draw images by using progressive scanning. The main problem that you encounter when you export a project to tape is that the very thin lines that show up on the screen may flicker or appear to crawl. Pay special attention to titles, where thin lines are likely to appear in some letters.
In view (so to speak) of these issues, you should try to preview your movie on an external monitor before burning it to a DVD or exporting it to tape.
 | If you use the LCD on your camcorder to preview your movie, keep in mind that the LCD panel probably isn't interlaced. However, the camcorder's viewfinder probably is interlaced. This means that flickering thin lines (for example) may show up in the viewfinder but not on the LCD panel. Preview the movie using both the LCD and the viewfinder before you export it. |
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