• Adobe After Effects

  Big problems – PAR and scaling down HD

  Posted by Anders Carlsson on October 21, 2009 at 8:33 pm

  Hi all,

  I have a problem that I need help with. It’s regarding the nightmare that is pixel aspect ratio. I have two problems, but I suspect they might have the same answer.

  Problem #1:

  I’m doing work for a client, and all of our material is shot on the RED ONE and exported as 1920×1080 tiff-sequenses. I do my comping and onlining in a 1920×1080 square pixels. All is good and everything is sharp. I use logos and text from illustrator (square pixels), and I make sure to check the “continue rasterize” thing. All is sharp. The problem begins when it’s time to deliver.

  Delivery format: PAL widescreen (1,46) 720×576. I make a comp with these settings, drag my HD comp into that and make a “fit to width”. Everything match up. BUT. My text is very pixely. I know that the resoultion is a lot lower, but my text doesn’t look anything like the other SD masters the company did in Final Cut, which has nice edges. I have tried with the continue rasterize thing for the nested comp, but it doesn’t work. Any idéas? Am I doing it right?

  Problem #2

  I import 10bit uncompressed quicktime files into after effects. Master files from earlier projects. Looking at the files in quicktime player, everything looks good and sharp. But once I have it in AE it looks shit. I interpret the footage to PAL widescreen (1,46), check the max quality button, and make a new comp. Still shitty quality compared to how it looks in quicktime. I have tried interpreting with other aspect ratios, but still low quality. I have tried with the field order. Still shitty. I have the comp at full res, at best quality, and I have tried with all the different openGL things. I can not get the footage to look as sharp as it does in quicktime player. Not even close. And one more thing, it works perfectly in FCP. Sharp. Any idéa what I’m doing wrong.

  I relaize it’s a long post, so thank you for taking the time.

  Roland R. kahlenberg replied 16 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 5 Replies
• 5 Replies

• 

  Anders Carlsson

  October 21, 2009 at 10:42 pm

  Hi Dave,

  thank you for your response,

  but I turned pixel aspect correction off. Still, it’s no way near how it looks in QT or FCP. I have tried rendering a file from AE and compared the two in QT, and the AE-one looks really bad in comparasion. AE is making something with the file that makes it look bad and pixely.
• 

  Roland R. kahlenberg

  October 22, 2009 at 11:43 am

  Ensure that your comp is set to 100% and check again. Also, render out a frame and check the result in FCP. I’m assuming that your issues are simply preview related and will not be visible in your renders.

  HTH
  RoRK

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• 

  Anders Carlsson

  October 22, 2009 at 1:41 pm

  Hi Roland,

  I have tried rendering a file and it looks bad in QT player and FCP. So AE is not just affecting the preview. Any other idéas? Really having problems with this.

  /Anders
• 

  Anders Carlsson

  October 22, 2009 at 4:31 pm

  Thanks for your reply.

  My source is 1080p. I have tried with every field order, same problem.
• 

  Roland R. kahlenberg

  October 23, 2009 at 1:51 pm

  Try 16:9 but square pixels. Another area to look into is in QTPlayer, check and see that the video is set to high quality.

  Sell your AEPs with broadcastGEMs’ DVD series of templates. Click here for more

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