Understanding Pixel Aspect Ratios

As designers when we talk about pixels, we are speaking of a 1:1 square object.  When we speak about pixels per inch, we understand that pixels are the smallest element in an image consisting of a single color/opacity.

In a video, this is not always the case.  There are cameras that produce video using non-square pixels.  Generally, these are older cameras that shoot in the DV format. For the purposes of this course, always default to using square pixels.

Text adapted from: “Pixel Aspect Ratio” by Wikipedia is licensed under CC BY SA 3.0

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