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Dancing Stills
My assumption on this issue is that it’s a pixel ratio problem.
I’m working on a tribute piece for a client that involves importing blown up old photos and doing your typical pan, scale, 3d cut outs etc. I’ve been working with video a lot lately but since these are stills I can’t figure out why when I go to export in AE does almost my entire video distort horizontally and vertically.
I’m using motion blur and frame blending for most of the clips, but I have a feeling that it has to do with how the images were exported after blowing up i.e. they’re exported into Square pixel ratios and I’m trying to put them into a widescreen video format. Any ideas?
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6 Replies
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it’s pretty normal to work with square pixel still images in non-square pixel comps. ae will handle the par (pixel aspect ratio) conversion for you. the only thing that you want to make sure is that the images are being interpreted as square (1.0) pixel images. just select one in the project window, at the top of the project window, next tot he thumbnail image, it should give the par value like this: (1.0).
if it has any other value and you know that the image is square pixel, choose file>interpret footage>main and override the pixel aspect ratio.
when you drag that image into a non-square par comp (like a 1.2 par widescreen comp), then ae will do the compensation and it should appear correctly. if it is looking distorted, try toggling the par aspect ratio conversion button in the preview window (it looks like a rectangle with an arrow above it). when enabled it should make the widescreen comp look widescreen (16×9) and correctly scale the image.
remember that a widescreen sd comp is still 720×480 (or 486) just like a 4×3 comp, despite being ‘widescreen’. it’s the par that makes it widescreen….
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
oops, your issue was specific to exporting/rendering…
it’s pretty much the same issue… to correctly view your render in widescreen, you should view it in software that can compensate for par on a computer screen. some players do this, some don’t, some only do it for specific codecs…. if this is for broadcast/dv, to be sure, you should view it in an nle (like premiere, fcp, etc…).
if this render is not for broadcast, but for a computer screen (maybe streaming on the web or something), then you may want to work in a square pixel comp. just choose one of the square pixel presets when creating a new comp.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Well the override didn’t work, as they’re all being interpreted correctly as square pixels (1.00). So i know that’s not the issue. I have and do use the aspect ratio conversion switch on my previews, but that doesn’t help explain this distortion effect which appears in the preview and in exports. Could it be the still format? What still format should re-import the images in?
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The pixels on these are huge to help with the zooming some are 1100X1646. This may be a problem. I’m attempting to output right now to a DV widesceen video 16:9. My output is set to progressive output for upload to the web (for a client preview).
The “dancing” involves what I would interpret as a “Jitter” expression put on the image when I go to move it position wise or scale the image. It could be pixel depth…
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Actually I found the most bizarre solution…. the images were vectors, and AE was trying to interpret them as such. In keeping with my vector experience I had collapse transformations on each vectored images and noticed one large file I was given was a JPEG. The JPEG was fine and not jittery but the vector images who I had turned the switch on for were dancing, I suppose trying to scale, but were being treated as non-vector images. I turned the switch off and everything is fine…. Bizarre….
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if it is jittery horizontal details, since these images are large and you are scaling them, i’d place the blur on an adjustment layer. that way the blur is in dependent of the scaling…
otherwise our blur amount will vary based on the scale of the image. i.e., a blur of 1 pixel at 100% scale is only a blur of .5 pixel at 50% scale, so to maintain that blur amount you’d need to animate the blur to go from 1 to 2 pixels as the layer scales… of course you could use an expression, but an adjustment layer would be easier and the blur would applied over the top of all the images with just one adjustment layer…
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW
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