Video Editing with Avid: Media Composer, Symphony, Xpress

14	Importing Graphics

Increasingly, an editor who is finishing programmes on the Avid will be faced with importing graphics that have been supplied by a graphic artist. Before running through the import options, it will be useful to consider the best way of preparing graphics for video. Of particular importance are the frame size and the pixel aspect ratio.

Frame Size and Pixel Aspect Ratio

The native video frame size used by Avid (PAL) is the ITU-R 601 standard of 720 × 576 non-square pixels, for the standard 4:3 aspect ratio. A little arithmetic will show that 720 × 576 does not equate to an aspect ratio of 4:3. This is because the pixels are not square but, in PAL, are slightly wider than they are high, thus displaying the normal 4:3 image ...