In a 720x576 Widescreen project, in preprocessing, should I crop my stills images to:

787x576 (accounts for PAL DV pixel aspect ratio of 1.0926)
or
1049x576 (accounts for PAL DV WS pixel aspect ratio of 1.4568)

Dan

I think there may be some graphics packages where you can possibly specify the pixel aspect ratio so you could specify 720x576 at PAR of 1.4568. I use Serif PhotoPlus which doesn't have that facility so I always use 1049x576 - works fine.

Of course , there's nothing to stop you using 720x576 and having a border either side.

Ian

Dont crop them at all. Just place them in the project in their native aspect and resolution. In Vegas then click on the Pan/Crop icon, right click and select "Match output aspect". Let vegas take care of it and it does a great job.

My project would either be Pal DV widescreen or HDV 50i.

That's a good point. Using Pan/Ctop will also let you experiment with cropping without having to go back to your graphics application.

Ian