• Adobe After Effects

  Workflow when using Digtal Betacam footage & Photoshop Graphics

  Posted by Xavier Paredes on March 28, 2010 at 3:05 am

  Hello Dear Colleagues,

  I’m hoping someone can help me get things straight in my head. I pretty much stopped using AE years ago (I believe it was when version 6 was current) and back then, if you needed to create motion graphics for DVD Studio Pro, the general consensus was that you began designing your graphics in Photoshop in a document with a size of 720×540 square pixels and then resize to 720×480 before importing into DVD Studio Pro.

  I’ll soon be working on a project which calls for motion menus and in preparation to that, I’ve been trying to refresh myself and have noticed that the 720×540 square pixel template in PS and AE is gone. Instead, I see a 720×534 (D1 Square Pixels) template. I have two questions:

  1. I don’t remember this being a template in older version of PS and AE. What happened?

  2. For my project, I’ll be working with Digital Betacam footage (720×486) as well as photos and graphics that my client will send. I will then need to create motion menus with above mentioned assets. How should I setup my workflow? Should I stretch my DBC footage to fit a 720×534 composition? Totally stumped.

  I’ve already read the famous “Understanding the use of square vs non-square pixels in AE from Rick Gerard” but to be honest, (and I hope I don’t offend anyone) the article could have been written in a way easier to understand. Please forgive me for this criticism but I was left in a worst position after reading it than before I read it.

  Thank you in advance for any tips or advice.

  Regards,
  Xavier Paredes

  Xavier

  Xavier Paredes replied 16 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Kevin Camp

  March 28, 2010 at 4:55 pm

  as far as the comp size difference, adobe has corrected the comp/frame sizes for ntsc and pal comps to be more accurate, so, if you want to work in square pixel frames for 4×3 ntsc work , you’d be best to work with the newer 720×534 preset.

  however, photoshop now supports non-square pixels, so you can work in 720×480 (480 is the height for dv and dvd) with a 0.9 par (1.2 for 16×9). photoshop will handle the conversion of any square pixel images that you bring into the ntsc file,so you don’t need to stretch anything. if you had frames that were captured from ntsc, you would want to make sure that photoshop knew those frames had the correct par before bringing them into the ntsc par photoshop file (you can set the par for cs4 in view>pixel aspect ratio).

  Kevin Camp
  Senior Designer
  KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW
• 

  Xavier Paredes

  March 29, 2010 at 11:05 pm

  Hi Kevin, thanks for your response. I forgot to mention that I’ll be working with wide-screen footage. After looking again to both AE and PS I might have answered my own questions:

  In AE I see a template called “NTSC D1 Widescreen” with frame size of 720×486 and a PAR of 1.21. Is this the one I need?

  In Photoshop I see a template with the same exact settings as above. Use this one too, right?

  Do I have to do any de-interlacing or any other mumbo-jumbo to the DBC footage before I bring into AE?

  Thanks!
  Xavier

  Xavier

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up