What codec?

[Eric Connolly Productions]

I'm in the process of creating some digital signage media to be displayed on a 1080p display. Is there an HD video codec that I can output and burn to DVD that will fill the entire 1080p screen? Thanks

[MrBoylan]

I'm in the process of creating some digital signage media to be displayed on a 1080p display. Is there an HD video codec that I can output and burn to DVD that will fill the entire 1080p screen? Thanks

You can burn an AVCHD format video that will not only fill the 16:9 screen but will also use the full 1920x1080 pixel resolution and can be stored on a DVD-ROM Disc. Just about all Blu-ray players can then play this back as if it were a Blu-ray Disc so you wouldn't even need a PC to play it back. Make sure you master it correctly though. I think there are a few prosumer DVD mastering tools that wil allow you to output this in the appropriate format onto a DVD-ROM disc so it's playable on Blu-ray Disc players. You'll probably want to render this as 1080i/60 (1080p/30 interlaced to 60i) as Blu-ray players only support 1080i/60 or 1080p/24 (can't do native 1080p/30 on Blu-ray).

If you're not as concerned about resolution, then just use any mastering tool to create a DVD with the anamorphic widescreen flag turned on. If you're burning to DVD, then the mastering tool is automatically going to use MPEG-2 as the codec as this is the DVD standard. Resolution would then be 720x480 (standard def).

If it's just for use on a PC, then an MKV container would work. You could use either H.264 or AVCHD as the codec and get a native 16:9 1080p or 720p video for use in a PC or Mac media player. Make sure your computer can be set to exactly 1920x1080 pixel output in order to prevent any additional scaling on the PC or the TV.

I'm sure there are other choices, but any of the above should work.

Regards,

-Chris