As video cameras and still cameras become smaller and easier to use, we find ourselves in a world of novice video and photo editors who immediately jump into their editing programs telling themselves it can’t be that hard to do.

While the basic editing of a photo slideshow to DVD is not rocket science, it is a good thing to have a little knowledge about the different formats that are becoming standard on today’s televisions. This will make your start in the video world a little less filled with snapshots of pulling your hair out because it doesn’t look the same on the television as it did in your editing program.

While there are far too many resolutions and formats to go into discussion here, let’s talk about the basic standard NTSC DV resolution for those of us who have not jumped into the HD widescreen world of television.

I have several of those friends who are just getting into the run of the mill photo slideshow videos and time and time again, they all have the same problem. They call me up saying, “Hey, I put these photos into my video editing program and when I play it back on my monitor they are huge! Also, the video starts to stutter the more it plays.”

Here’s the quick way to avoid this problem and keep you away from those sleepless nights trying to figure out what’s wrong. Standard NTSC DV video resolution is 720 pixels by 480 pixels. Before bringing your digital camera photos into your video editing program, you need to crop all your photos to the 720 x 480 pixel resolution and no larger than 150 dots per inch. If you have a vertical shot you want to use, try to crop it to these dimensions as well. Nothing bugs me more to see a video someone has put together with photos and they show a vertical image that hasn’t been cropped and the black borders appear around the edges. How ugly!

Remember, depending on your digital camera’s resolution and what setting you have it on, your photos could be several thousand pixels wide and tall. These size photos brought in at full resolution into an editing program will choke it faster than a cat trying to swallow a hairball.

I don’t have any direct links to give you, but do a little research into the editing realm by visiting your local bookstore or just searching online. You’ll be surprised what you can learn. I still am myself.

By being prepared before you get to the editing stage and “Making The Right Crop”, your photographic videos will work like a charm every time.

Article Tags: Cropping | Video | Videography

Filed under: Videography