Exporting animation as HD in AE?

[Steve Freebairn]

Yes you can export an animation as HD, but encore doesn’t accept HD.

[Mylenium]

Huh? Encore does not support HD authoring (and how should it, since neither the BDR nor HD-DVD specs are “nailed”) and if you just want a DivX clip on a disc, use Nero or whatever. Should you refer to uncompressed output, that can be easily done using a proper output module (the default one should be AVI uncompressed anyway on a Windows system).

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Matthias]

should i just set my comp setting the project is in to 1080 by 720 resolution. And what format would be the best to export it as?

[Mylenium]

Just use the HD presets as they come with AE, so for HD 720 you need 1280 x 720 pixels, square pixel aspect. What format you use merely depends on what you’re going to do with it later on, but assuming you wanna achieve smooth playback on a computer, you should use H.264, Xvid, DivX or similar MPEG-4 based CoDecs. I would do the final compression in external tools such as VirtualDub (you have much more options there) and export only a mildly compressed clip from AE.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Matthias]

I made my comp settings in ae 7 for my animation 1920:1080 but encore didnt except it, it only will except 720:480 as its highest resolution.

[Steve Roberts]

That is because 720×480 is the only frame size available for a DVD. You cannot make HD DVDs yet. 720×480 is currently your only choice.

Until the DVD spec is revised by those mysterious standards people. 🙂

[Matthias]

if thats the case, then how would you put footage on a dvd you shot with the sony hdv camera that shoots with a 1920:1080 or 1080i resolution.

[Steve Roberts]

You’d drag it into a 720×480 DV-NTSC widescreen comp (use the preset when making the comp) or scale down the 1080 comp in the output module.

BEWARE: 1) Because you’re scaling down the 1080 footage either way, you must separate fields (file>interpret footage>main) and 2) you cannot scale down in the output module if you are rendering with fields.

I’d create the 720×480 widescreen comp and drag the big comp into that and scale it so it fits.

NOTE: make sure your DVD-authoring app knows the footage is widescreen.