posted 03-01-2001 06:04 PM
The horizontal resolution of NTSC is 480 lines, PAL has a horizontal resolution of 576. if you're working on NTSC 720x480 is the right resolution. The reason that your image is cut off when watching it on a TV is that every TV uses what is called overscan. The image is projected on the screen a little larger than the screen actually is. Every TV has a little different overscan, so therefore broadcast Video uses a so called 'action safe zone' and 'title safe zone'. basically this means keeping your important stuff and titles away from the sides at least 10% of the width and height of the image. When projected on a beamer for instance, there is no such thing as overscan, so you get the whole image. There are professional reference video monitors with an underscan option, to show the borders of the image, but they cost around $1500, at least here in Europe.
As far as the stretched image goes, hard to tell what that is. If your image is full screen in the preview window, you should be fine.
Hope this clears things up a little...
barend
Oh by the way, how does one get more karma?
posted 03-01-2001 02:32 PM