What resolution to use for NTSC DVD

[Daynja]

I am preparing a video in sony vegas 7 that I will be exporting to NTSC DVD. I am wondering what resolution I should be working in to create minimal aspect ratio error or letter boxing. This will be a 4:3 full screen DVD.

[setarip_old]

Hi!

720x480...

[Daynja]

Hi!

720x480...

but 720x480 isn't 4:3. I know it isn't square pixels, and maybe I don't understand this correctly, but what should my source files be? I'm taking pictures and I can pretty much crop them to any size I want, what resolution should I choose?

[ilovejedd]

720x480. I think you set the aspect ratio (4:3 or 16:9) in the IFO. I believe VOB files support AR signaling, too.

[neuron2]

Allowable DVD picture resolutions are:

MPEG-2, 525/60 (NTSC): 720x480, 704x480, 352x480, 352x240
MPEG-2, 625/50 (PAL): 720x576, 704x576, 352x576, 352x288
MPEG-1, 525/60 (NTSC): 352x240
MPEG-1, 625/50 (PAL): 352x288

[mpucoder]

The beauty of DAR (Display Aspect Ratio) is it is independant of resolution. Your choice of resolution should be based on the original material resolution (how much resizing is needed to get to a standard DVD resolution as listed above) and the bitrate you can allot to the video. For example if the original material was shot in a low resolution such as half D1 it is better to not resize it. On the other hand if the movie is very long and requires a low bitrate, lower resolutions encode with fewer artifacts.