Aspect Ratio

[Chris Wright]

interpret footage widescreen and comp settings widescreen and render widescreen and see widescreen

[Jim Harrison]

Hi Chris,
I am very knew to this program, could you spell it out in newbee terms.

Thanks

[Chris Wright]

newbier would be type interpret footage and composition settings in AE’s help search box. They are very thorough.

[Victoria Murphy]

Jim and Chris,

I followed this thread with much interest because I have a similar question.

I am working on a project in Final Cut; it is DV footage so the screen aspect ratio is 720 x 480. I imported some footage into AE CS3, want to do some work on it, and then export it back into FC to combine with other footage. Because of the square/non-square pixel aspect ratio situation, the image is stretched horizontally in AE. (This is particularly disconcerting because not only is it adding 30 pounds to the modern dancer on the screen, but that dancer happens to be me!)

As per your advice, Chris, I read about interpreting footage and comp settings in AE help. It seems to me that in my situation I don’t want to change the settings, since I will be sending the footage back to FC, but I do want to view it correctly while in AE (if for no other reason than to quell my ego). So I am thinking that all I need to do is to toggle the aspect ratio correction button at the bottom of the composition panel. Do you agree? Should I toggle back before I render?

Thank you.
Victoria

[Chris Wright]

aspect button doesn’t change anything really, only the interpretation, comp settings, and render make it go wide or not. button is for quality check because when wide view is on so that things look correctly, the image gets more pixelated. Sometimes you don’t want that for color correction etc.

[Jim Harrison]

Ok, I figured out what my problem was. I was importing my footage (720×480 DV captured) from my editing program into AE and it would open up as a 720×480 comp. I went to composition settings and the setting was 720×480 but it looked narrower than my original footage. So I took a frame from the original DV Capture footage and opened it up in Photoshop and noticed that it was 853×480. So I went into my Comp Settings and unchecked the “lock aspect ratio box” and change it from 720 to 853×480 hit ok. That resized the comp, now there were black bars on the sides of my footage which AE had crunched down to 720. Then I rightclicked on the footage in the timeline, choose transform – fit to comp size. Bingo, 853×480 aspect Ratio.

[James Griffin]

Hello,

I am having a separate issue with pixel aspect ratio. We are working with footage which is D1 720×486. We are exporting as apple pro res 422 to FCP 6. The footage is 16×9 when viewed in AE but when we import into FCP it is 4×3. Checking the anamorphic box in the sequence settings or item properties does not resolve. We were able to resolve by looking in the distort toggle in the Motion tab, when the clip is loaded into the viewer. It seems FCP cannot correctly interpret the footage and is doing an auto distort of 33% to the AE footage.

My question: Is there a render setting that will alleviate this issue, or must I undistort every frame which I send over from AE?

Thanks in advance for your help 🙂