recommended pixels/inch and targa...
 

I'm about to render a short logo animation for a movie we made in school. It will be shown in a small movie theater-sized screen. I'm using MentalRay, quality is default production motion blur, and frame size is HD 1080p. Pixels per inch is set to the default 72.

I did a test render of one frame and blown up it looks pretty pixelated on my monitor. So I'm assuming that it'll look even more awful in the theater. Is it because of the pixels per inch? Is there a recommended number for pixels per inch for images that will be shown on a screen about as large as the ones found in small movie theaters?

Or is it because I'm using jpeg? I wanted to use Targa, but I was having trouble with the Alpha Channel. When I import the sequence to Premier Pro 2 (as a sequence of frames) and I select to ignore alpha channels, for some reason, Premiere only ignores the FIRST frame of the sequence. All the other frames have black backgrounds. Is there a way to render in targa without alpha channels? Or perhaps, a way to make Premiere Pro 2 ignore ALL frames of a sequence?

Im not sure what the problem is but mayas jpeg export is rubbish, so try a different format

what about a 4k plate?
I think it will look fine tbh, I don't know much about this but the contrast of the projector might make your film darker or whatever.

elephantinc, can you suggest a good format that won't have alpha channels?

hammer, what do you mean by a 4k plate?

Thanks for both of your responses.

Hey mamikapapo.

Just keep the jpegs you already rendered.
They will view fine on the screen as long as it is projected and scaled OPTICLY through the normal, or even digital projectors in the theater.

You will notice no pixelization, as optical scaling only makes it APPEAR that the image has been scaled, when in fact, it has not:)

This is how a celuliod 35-70mm positive print gets scaled up to fit a screen the size of a large passenger buss:)

Even HD digital streams are projected this way.

Ah, I think I know what you mean! Thanks ragecgi! I'll just use what I have.