basic exporting questions

[David Bogie]

Welcome to the family.

Your project settings establish the export default so I’m guessing you have built this project, and invested tons of time, improperly and are probably using an HD format.

[Sara Huneke] “It only needs to be a Quicktime. It’s not for broadcast. “

QT is just a wrapper for the file, there are hundreds of QT codecs.

You must tell us two things:
1. Project settings for you current Motion work (see the manual for where to check this)
2. Your desired output destination. That is, where will people be watching this movie of yours? Exactly, you cannot be vague, and you only get one choice this time around.

bogiesan

[Susan Hankers]

Thanks so much for your response. As you can see, I’m really lost… I hope the project is salvageable.

1. Here are screenshots of project settings.

2. Here’s what I know about where the movie will be shown. It will be on a widescreen video monitor near the entrance of a building. According to the guy in charge, “any kind of file, movie, video, on a DVD or not on a DVD in HD or standard can be shown on it.”

I hope that gives you some clue of what I’m dealing with. Thanks again.

[Andy Neil]

Well, first of all, the “default” export option in Motion is the animation codec which is likely why it’s saying it will take so long. Based on what you know about the display, I’d say they are running display from a computer that can handle lots of different types (or else they plan on converting what ever you give them).

In either case, I’d probably give them a high quality H264 file to ensure high quality and proper playback.

When you export, you may or may not have an H264 preset in the dialog box. If not, you’ll have to create it by hitting the Option button and changing the compressor to H264. Also, change the bit rate from automatic to something like 3000 kbits/sec. The higher the number, the better the overall quality, but the longer it’ll take to encode.

Andy

[Susan Hankers]

Andy,
Thanks a lot for your input. I exported it as H264 and it went a lot faster this time. (I set it to about 500 kbits/sec for the test run.)

My next question is how to preserve the aspect ratio.

The canvas is set to High Definition 16:9. This is what it looks like in Motion:

When I exported it, it bunched up like this:

Do you know how I can fix this?

Thanks again for your help! I am so very very grateful.

[Andy Neil]

What you’re seeing is an issue with how Quicktime is displaying the file.

You see, your clips is 1440×1080 which, if you do the math is a 4:3 ratio. Quicktime is playing as if it’s a 4:3 clip with square pixels. In the movie properties (CMD+J) you can tell QT to conform aperature so it properly displays the clip in 16:9.

However, if you want to avoid problems on the playback end since you yourself won’t be running it, I suggest that when you export, you go into your output tab, and uncheck the “Current Settings” checkbox. Then you can set the resolution to 1920×1080 on export and get yourself a true 16×9 QT clip.

Andy