A TV screen is not the same as your computer monitor. Unfortunately until HDTV becomes the standard, there are a few differences you should know about before hitting the render button.

Rendering to Fields. When rendering your animation for video you must interlace the images, or render to fields. Have you ever seen a computer animation on TV that looks like it was not anti-alised or the edges looked wavy? Because of the way a TV is projected it is necessary to render all video animations to fields. Fields are alternating pixel rows of 2 images, slightly offset. Consequently there is a field one and a field two - also referred to as odd and even, or upper and lower. A field-rendered image is actually 50% of the frame before and 50% of frame the frame after in a sequence. While field rendering is the only way to get smooth animations on a TV screen, you cannot view this same animation on a computer.

Screen Proportions. Standard NTSC (broadcast quality) video signal in North America is 720 x 486 (in pixels). PAL for our European friends is 720 x 576. And soon to be everyone’s favorite, HDTV is 1125 x 633.

Frame Rate. NTSC video is generally put to tape at 29.997 frames per second (fps). This is referred to as “drop frame.” Industry standard for postproduction and CG work is “non drop frame” or 30 fps. A computer monitor cannot play anything smoother than 15 fps. If you're rendering output for a computer screen, 30 fps is just a waste of time and file space.

Finally, check with your editors and find out what software applications your animation may be passing through before it makes it to tape. Knowing what settings are necessary for each step will save you a lot of time in the end.

Part I - Tips for rookie animators