• Adobe After Effects

  GURU’s: Creating & editing CG content for 16:9 Display

  Posted by Tim Kocher on April 26, 2006 at 10:51 pm

  Hi:

  I read Rick Gerard’s article regarding pixel aspects in AE project with great interest, but I fear my thick-headedness is getting in the way. Basically, I’m hoping that someone out there can answer a relatively simple question for me …

  If I am rendering animations intended for 16:9 DVD display, at what resolution should I render my animations if the software I am using can only render out in square pixels? Also, what if I use another piece of software that CAN render out in non-square DV pixels … what is the best approach to mix the two?

  My approach has been to render out at 856×480, and edit and comp at this resolution, then when I am ready for the final render, I choose to render out to DV 16:9 and then convert to MPG2 for DVD production. I also decided to keep everything the same and in my 3d apps that can render non-square pixels, I render them as square anyway just to be consisent, and let AE handle the conversion. Is this correct? Or am off here?

  THANKS!!!

  -Tim

  Steve Roberts replied 20 years ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Sam Moulton

  April 28, 2006 at 12:26 am

  that is how i do it
• 

  Tim Kocher

  April 30, 2006 at 9:22 am

  Thanks, Sam. So you definitely render out to a DV codec? (Which is of course rect. pixels). I wasn’t sure if I had the calculations right for the correct pixel aspect ratio conversion.

  Can anyone else give me second (or third) verification?

  Thanks!
• 

  Steve Roberts

  April 30, 2006 at 2:20 pm

  I’d render to the Quicktime animation codec before converting to MPEG-2, if your MPEG-2 encoder can accept QT movies. There’d be less compression (quality loss) before recompressing to MPEG-2.

  But as for the size … if I were using a square pixel app, I’d render at 864×486, then drop it into a widescreen 480 comp and bump it up one pixel. This chops off six (2+4) pixels. If memory serves, the DV spec (480) is the D1 spec (486) with six pixels chopped off, so the vertical resolution becomes a multiple of 16 for compression purposes. I’m not telling you to do this, it’s just how I’d do it. 🙂 I haven’t done any tests between the two methods (856 vs. 864), but I’d guess the difference would either be negligible or dependent on the material.

  Yes, I know it doesn’t match what Rick wrote, but it’s closer to what the Meyers recommend in CMG volume 2: 864×486 for D1, 864×480 for DV. So I suppose you could use 864×480 square pix and it would match what I’m doing.

  Does that help?

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