Converting animation to progressive

[Daniel Low]

“Yes…all the options are available regardless of the format, the codec etc. I think trueSpace is converting the image somewhere before it get’s compressed.”

So that tells me that Truespace does not honour a codecs PAR, as we all know that DV is non-square.

I don’t find it surprising really, only the better (and very expensive), higher end 3D solutions work well directly exporting to video; 3DS Max, Maya and SoftImage spring to mind.
With the likes of Truespace (and I’m not belittling it whatsoever) you are far better off exporting to an image sequence and working with that externally. Let a video specific application like AfterEffect or you NLE handle PARs, SARs and DARs!

p.s. BMP and JPEG are square pixel formats (even though the JFIF standard allows for aspect flags to be written, it’s rarely if ever implemented), so Photoshop is correct..

[Chris Blair]

We don’t have any issues whatsoever with aspect ratio mismatches, and we typically render out to our native .dps file format out of trueSpace. I’ve rendered a few times to Quicktime when someone else needed the animation, and they never had a problem with pixel aspect.

Same with the animation guy we use up near Chicago. He does big-time stuff, animation for music videos for David Byrne and other big-name musical acts, and all I know is his Quicktimes using the animation codec look correct and are clean as a whistle.

Our Velocity system also has a feature called a virtual file system that allows you to take the captured video file, and access it instantly as an image sequence in any one of about 10 still formats, including jpg, bmp, tga, tif, sgi, raw, pic and several others. The BMP sequences look perfect if you import them into AE, Digital Fusion, animation programs, Premiere CS3, Vegas etc., and require nothing different in terms of settings or processing than the other image sequence formats. It’s really a cool feature and that’s why so many animators have used DPS (now Harris) stuff over the years.

So while you’re exactly right about bmp and DV PAR, Velocity and trueSpace are are doing something to correct for this and doing a transparent job of it.

BUT…I’m curious to know if the original poster has figured out HIS issue though!

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Paul Campbell]

Daniel, thanks for the link. I’ll post something as soon as I get home!