PAR Confusion

[Dario]

The rotosopes are DV straight from a Canon GL-1 and therefore do not look stretched. Once they’re added into the composite they look fine. It’s just that the C4d image sequences aspect is off.

So, do I need to first rerender the rotos with a wrong PAR to match the wrong PAR on the C4d images?

This way I’d have a singular problem and then apply whatever ‘fix’ you all come up with to the whole thing.

[Steve Roberts]

You shouldn’t have rendered the C4D images 1 to 1 PAR. They should have been .9.

(Now … technically, DV is 10/11, not 9/10 (source: Meyer CMG v.2), even though AE tags it at 9/10. If you render from C4D at .9 and it still looks off, try rendering at 10/11. AE will probably interpret it at .9, but your goal is to match the DV, so maybe rendering C4D at 10/11 is right. (.90909))

If you can’t re-render the C4D, you’ll have to interpret it as 720×480 square pix in AE. Drop it into a DV preset comp for compositing and rendering. It will be too wide for your DV comp, and you’ll have to live with chopping off the side edges of the C4D shot, but it will be in correct proportion.

Steve

[Dario]

Thanks Steve,
I’m trying to learn 3 programs at once and things get lost along the way 🙂

Turns out I forgot that I’ve already composited some stuff with the wrong PAR and I think I need to figure out a way to use it.

Screen shots here (top 3 images):
https://www.jmtype.com/par.html

So, in this case (rather than my original post), would I take the wrong PAR composite render and drop that into a new comp set for square pixels. Then resize the clip using the handles to make it wide enough to fit the comp size?

I tried it and I think it looks OK but I’m not sure what FCE or DVDSP will do to it.
See the bottom image in the aforementioned screen shot.

[Steve Roberts]

It’s hard to tell at that size, Dario.

The final ender out of AE must be at the DV preset: 720×480, non-square, 29.97 (for NTSC, anyway). The render comp must be a DV preset comp.

What you do with the wrong stuff depends on what you’ve already done. If the C4D was 720×480 square, then you stretched the DV clip wider to fit into a 720×480 square comp, then they’re both wrong by the same amount. You should be able to drop that composite into a DV preset (non-square) comp, squeeze in the sides, and render.

Hope that helps,
Steve

[Dario]

Thanks again Steve, that helps a lot actually.
Unfortunately I don’t remember what I did to the DV clip (it’s been 3 months since). I’ve tried to reconstruct it and I think the DV clip is normal, i.e. not square. Therefore the fix is harder. I thought of doing a square comp with the DV clip and then compositing that to the C4D square. Finally taking that render and dropping it into a proper size one. Still can’t completely wrap my head around that option enough to even know if it would work. The bottom line I think is that the DV clips are good, it’s only the C4D stuff that’s off and I’m betting that few, if any, will notice. I did the original paintings so I guess I have final say any way. Having ‘taller’ pictures is more elegant, right 🙂