TV Commercial Dimensions for Flash Animation

[Ken Masters]

Hi There,


I have been asked to design an Animated Flash cartoon for a TV commercial but I am not exactly sure what dimensions to use.

I am from the UK so it would have to be designed for PAL and I read that their dimensions are 720x576.. but would a bigger resolution be needed for HDTV?

would something like 1280 x 720 be better?

I am not exactly sure what they use in the world of television advertisements so it will view great on most TV's.

[dmb85]

It depends. Always author at the highest possible resolution you think you will need, because its far easier to scale/crop down than to redo the project. For most HDTV, this is 1280x720.

I think your best bet is to author at 1280x720, BUT... since you know this is going to end up on TV, you probably want to use a safe frame with 4:3 aspect ratio rather than 16:9. In other words, don't put any text or important elements outside the 4:3 safe frame, cause you may end up cropping the 1280x720 down to the PAL dimensions.