-
help a noob set up a composition correctly
I am a total noob , in fact this is my first project! My goal is to make a video montage for a company which will be on display at a trade show on a 42″ plasma hooked up to a dvd player or laptop. My question is, what settings would you guys recommend for the following new composition fields: Preset, width and height, and pixel aspect ratio? I would really appreciate the help!
-
1 Reply
-
Ok, well, it depends on your footage and how you’re going to deliver.
I’ll assume you’ve imported your footage. Select it in the project panel and look at the text AE gives you at the top of the panel. It’ll show how long the footage is, as well as the pixel aspect ratio etc. If you think AE has interpreted the footage incorrectly, right click on the footage and go to interpret, main.
To make a comp with the same dimensions, length and aspect ratio as your footage, drag the file onto the “make new comp” button, which is situated at the bottom of the project panel.
An important thing to note, which cost me a lot of time when I was starting out with AE, is that if your footage looks squashed or distorted in the composition window it doesn’t necessarily mean that the aspect ratio is wrong. Click on the button at the foot of the composition window that looks like a square with arrows on it (I think that’s what it looks like – writing this from memory). That will toggle the appearance of the comp (but won’t affect how it’s rendered) so you can see what the final version looks like.
If you’ve already made the comp yourself manually, make sure it’s set to 720×576 (PAL) or 720×480 (I think – NTSC), or you won’t be able to write the rendered files to dvd when you’re done.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up