Animation has horizontal distortions

[Carl Amoscato]

Hi,

Are you seeing this on the PC screen or on the video monitor? Will the final product be on the web or on video or something else?

good luck,
Carl

There is no such thing as a video emergency.

[Brett Lewis]

We can only see it through the AVID express on the NTSC monitor.
The final product will be DVD.

[Carl Amoscato]

Hi,

What kind of project are you in? 30i or 30p? What resolution did you use when you imported the file?

good luck,
Carl

There is no such thing as a video emergency.

[Brett Lewis]

That I cannot answer as I am not the editor, I will inquire.

[Rory Brennan]

My guess is that the project is more likely to be 30i so you need to render Lower Field First and also your project resolution should probably be D1 (720 X 486) unless you are using a DV resolution in Avid.

Rory Brennan
Editor
New York City

“Have a nice day!”

[Carl Amoscato]

In addition to Rory’s suggestions, you might also try a short test export to DVD to see if the problem you’re seeing on the monitor makes it onto the DVD. Although unlikely, it may just be a monitoring problem.

good luck,
Carl

There is no such thing as a video emergency.

[William Meese]

“…we see a distortion every third of the screen vertically.”

Two horizontal lines splitting the video into thirds? When I’ve seen this before, it’s been DV footage’s 480-pixel height unintentionally resized to D1’s 486 pixels. As Rory points out, most of Avid’s resolutions are 486. The editor can try an import setting of “maintain, nonsquare” (IIRC) to test this, but – especially if these are online renders – you want to render to the project’s resolution for best results and for “fast import” into the project.

[Brett Lewis]

Great input! Can you inform me the exact specs for the file that I should save out of After Effects please?

[William Meese]

Did your editor try re-importing as I suggested? Did the problem go away?
You only answered one of Carl’s questions – end product is DVD – so I can’t answer yours.
You usually want to have this kind of info up front, before doing any rendering. Frame rate, field order, dimensions, codec, RGB vs 601 levels, audio specs, etc. What’s your editor saying? What does she need?

[Brett Lewis]

My editor has stepped out for a day or two. In the mean time I am finishing up the animation.

Guys I think that After effects did not save out the DV aspect ratio pixels. The resolution is right but in the composition settings Square pixels were checked. I have since used the DV preset although I will save uncompressed.

Thanks for all the input and I will post with our progress within a day or so.