Problem Working with HD in After Effects

[Darby Edelen]

I’m not sure of the specifics, but I can tell you that QT Player and FC Pro tend to look at things like resolution slightly different than AE does.

I can also tell you that 1280×1080 is not an HD frame size for display. I know that many HDV cameras capture HD anamorphically at 1440×1080 and then must have a non-square PAR applied to stretch them to the full HD frame.

For reference, 1920×1080 is the frame size for 1080i/p HD display and 1280×720 is the frame size for 720p.

As for your specific situation I’m afraid I can’t offer too much help except to ask: how did you received/shot the footage, and how did you captured it?

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Tim Allison]

I shot it on a Sony HDV camera as 1080i video, but converted it to DVCProHD 1080 when I ingested the video into FCP. Does that matter?

[Tim Allison]

It was a pixel aspect ratio issue.

[Brian Lynn]

First, which AE are you using?

Second, why the Final Cut ahead of AE?

Third, why the transfer to DVCProHD? Why not just work in the native format you shot with, and convert after you’ve done all you want? Does your FCP not work with HDV natively?

AE will work with HDV footage natively… maybe skip the FCP step and go straight into AE after you ingest to your HDD.

You might also try to Right Click your footage in AE, and Interpret Footage… Expirament with the different Pixel Aspect Ratio until you get what you desire.

[Darby Edelen]

[Brian Lynn] “AE will work with HDV footage natively…”

I think this is a bad idea. HDV is based on MPEG-2 which uses interframe compression, meaning that the current frame is built from information in the previous and following frames… This causes extremely slow render times.

You should go to a more production friendly format after/during capture. I like Photo JPEG at maximum quality, and I think Steve will agree with me there (;

Now, on to the problem at hand: If you shot in HDV then your footage should natively be 1440×1080. I have no idea exactly why FC Pro would say it’s 1280×1080, but it probably has something to do with the way you’re interpreting it in FC or an error in your conversion to DVCProHD. Since HDV captures at 1440×1080 you need to apply a 1.33 PAR in the footage interpretation (cmd-f) in AE to bring the 1440×1080 footage up to 1920×1080.

Read more about HDV and how much you should hate it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDV#Resolution_and_aspect_ratio

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Brian Lynn]

The “work with it natively” was mostly just as last resort, in case nothing else worked you could potentially work directly in HDV. I get footage from clients, and heaven knows what they’ve done to it before they get it to me, so sometimes if I am having bad issues I’ll stay in a native format. Not happily I might add…

I already hate HDV, but I read the link, and hate it even more now LOL! After reading that I am believing that native HDV work is an absolute last resort. Thanks for the info…

I’ve had more than just editing issues with HDV. Trying to get HDV footage into a Grass Valley Turbo (GV T) was just about impossible. After I watched the “video engineer” futz around and fail for 5 hours, I finally told him forget it, I would operate the portable deck, and put it inline. GV T failed me again, for totally different reasons this time!