editing for 9:16 (monitors rotated to portrait orientation)
 

A hypothetical/potential client wants their project delivered on DVD and "would need the DVD to be in a 9 X 16 format as our monitor is [rotated 90° to portrait orientation]"

I do not own a monitor that I can rotate -- well, I can rotate it, but you know what I mean -- so I can't recreate the environment in which the deliverable will be played. Or maybe I can. Bare with me...

I figure I am looking at one of two possible scenarios. Either a) the monitor, when rotated from landscape to portrait, corrects the display thus content appears right side up; or b) the monitor, when rotated from landscape to portrait, does not correct the display thus content appears on its side (rotated 90°).

Situation b seems pretty straight forward: I will have to rotate my clips 90° in the timeline and manually pan/scan. there will obviously be some black bars at top and bottom as I will effectively have a 1:1 image, right?

Situation a, seems tricky, doesn't it? In fact, I am racking my brain trying to figure out how to fit the image to a 9:16 frame in this scenario. It could just be mental fatigue

What you have to do is shoot your video 90 degrees from the start. Edit normally (your video will appear sideways), and export to DVD normally. Watching your DVD on a regularly oriented TV will have everything rotated 90 degrees, but once you watch the DVD on a vertically oriented TV, everything will appear correctly.

There shouldn't be any panning and scanning necessary if you shoot in 90 degrees.

Yes, that is the ideal situation. However, I won't be shooting new footage, they are giving me footage shot over the past few years and that is what I would be editing for a 9:16 presentation.

I'm going to have a talk with them and see if they are committed to that (and why)... but I am wondering if it is even possible to do what they are asking. It should be, to some degree.

How do these monitors work? Is their display orientation controlled by software settings? If it is rotated, I could have control over whether it displays corrected or sideways?

In my experience, it's not a special monitor - it's simply a standard LCD TV or monitor mounted vertically, typically in a lobby area. It makes the display look more like a piece of art rather than a widescreen monitor.

Portrait mode displays are not usually used for full-screen video, although possible (like dispaying fashon/models). This may require cropping, up/down rezzing and reraming if not shot at 90 degrees.

Most often there's a background (can be animated, maybe something like a Digital Juice Jumpback) and video inserts with more or less normal aspect ratios.

You can create/edit the composition in portait mode, but to export to DVD you have to rotate the timeline 90 degrees.

George/

P.S. If you're on Windows (XP, Vista) you can actually have it rotate your display; just press CTRL+ALT+Arrow (Up/Down/Left/Right).