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Question about video and preview window.
I was importing video that is the same size as my composition. I noticed there is a small area of black on both sides of the comp in the composition window. Is this normal and when I render the project will it be noticed on the player that it used to play the video?
Also, is the “region of interest” option the way most people use to crop/get that movie like effect on a clip?
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5 Replies
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The size is only part of the equation: you need to import your footage with the proper pixel aspect ratio, and make sure your comp has the proper pixel aspect ratio. Read this article by Rick Gerard.
Region of interest is not used for that effect. It is generally used to speed up previewing by only rendering part of the comp. The effect you want is “letterboxing”. You can either use two rectangular masks on a black solid, or insert a widescreen clip into a non-widescreen comp, and scale down the widescreen clip to fit the comp.
Since you’re quite new at this, you might want to send your AE questions to the Creative Calf.
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I have read the tutorial that was posted but this did not solve my problem. I still het the thin black lines on the rendered clip and I tried just about every combination of settings. I have captured this footage from the TV onto a DVD recorder then imported into my PC as an MPEG-2 file.
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Then Dave’s counsel should be kept on this one, as I might have steered you wrong. In other words, the thin black lines must have been a natural part of the capture process.
These black lines are deemed acceptable with the expectation that the video will be played back on a TV, and those black lines will not be seen. However, they will be seen on a computer, because computer monitors show the entire image.
If you want to play back those clips on a computer and never on a TV, I recommend you do what Dave recommended and scale up the video, or make a new comp with a smaller frame size to hide the black lines. Here are some things you should also do:
1. If you scale up, and the captured footage was interlaced (with thin lines where motion is seen)make sure you interpret the footage (file>interpret footage>main) with fields separated, mostl likely lower field first. If the result jiggles back and forth, use upper first.
2. If you crop with a smaller comp, I recommend you make a comp with dimensions divisible by 4 just to be safe (it’s an old-school compression thing). Note: if you crop an odd number of pixels off the top & bottom, make sure you move the clip up or down one pixel as well to avoid reversing field order and causing jittery video.Hope that helps,
Steve -
The black lines on the left and right are normal. As I understand it, they contain vertical interval blanking information for CRT televisions. Cropping them in a couple of pixels is standard operating procedure when scaling a video clip to create a picture-in-picture effect.
Are you sure that the comp and the clip have the exact same horizontal dimensions and matching pixel aspect ratios?
Jim Kanter,
Digital Film Institute
http://www.dfilminst.com -
In response to Jim, yes, the height.width and pixel aspect ratio are the same. I think you guys have pointed out the problem which is the way the footage was captured. Thanks for the knowledge on the flicker also, Steve.
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