• Adobe After Effects

  converting 1080i to 640x360p with AE CS5

  Posted by Kevin Haga on January 5, 2011 at 10:09 pm

  There have been a lot of posts here about how to get great web video from HDV source (1080i), using PP and AE.

  For the last 2 years, I have been using CS3 (Windows) to edit HDV video for web delivery, using the following workflow:

  1. capture/edit in PP3 using 1080i timeline.
  2. Export Movie to Debugmode Frameserver –> AviSynth to properly deinterlace and then scale down the video, typically to 640x360p AVI (square pixels). Use Lagarith Lossless codec from AviSynth.
  3. add graphics and animation in AE, using a 640×360 comp.
  4. Render out from AE to 640x360p AVI, again using Lagarith Lossless codec.
  5. Compress in Sorenson Squeeze.

  The results are about as good as you can get – this workflow deinterlaces into separate fields and then scales down – only once, and Sorenson does a great job on the compression.

  So… now I need to move up to CS5, and have decided to utilize an already available beefed up Mac Pro instead of investing in a new Windows system. Unfortunately, this move will prevent me from utilizing the same workflow to deinterlace/scale down the video (no Mac support for Debugmode Frameserver or AviSynth).

  I am happy to use AE for this task – but I’m NOT clear on how to actually do the proper or best deinterlace/scaledown. What steps would I take in AE? And with CS5 linking available to me, I can bring the PP project into AE for graphics/animation. Sounds great.

  But my question is – what is the best workflow between PP and AE for me to convert edited 1080i into wonderful 640x360p video that I can feed into Sorenson for final compression?

  Thank you for any thoughts or advice.

  Kevin Haga replied 15 years, 8 months ago 36,795 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Kevin Haga

  January 5, 2011 at 11:09 pm

  ok, thanks – the Mac Pro will not have FC nor Compressor – extra $$…

  I’m certainly open to a plug-in for helping. Still not sure about the workflow that is used by professionals to go from 1080 down to 640×360.

  If I have a 1080i in PP, what size comp would I create in AE? If it’s 1080 and I use the plugin to deinterlace, where does the scaling to 640×360 occur? I am used to large outputs – for example, I have 10 GB files for 15 minute videos already. I just feed these into Squeeze.

  I like the current flow, since I can scale the video down, then add graphics in AE at the scaled down size (640 x 360). If I have a 1080 comp in AE with graphics/animation, how do well do they get scaled down?

  Thanks again

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