Quicktime import problem in CS3

[Roger Lansing]

Dave, thanks for the quick response. I am actually away from my machine right now and on the road. What I can tell you is that I have a varied mix of files, mostly in SD and a handful of animated elements from the Digital Juice library that were exported in native format (and size) using DJ’s Juicer. The video files look great in Quicktime player, in Final Cut and in Motion, but suddenly not in AE. I have never had this issue before, but most of my AE work in the past few months has been graphic oriented only, no video imported at all. I have used some of the DJ elements in the past, but have used their included AE projects to modify their elements…no issues when doing that.

I will get better info to you as soon as I am back in the edit suite.

Roger C. Lansing

Multi-Media Production Coordinator
National Baseball Hall of Fame

Cooperstown, NY

[Kevin Camp]

my bet would be that ae is trying to deinterlace progressive footage.

when ae sees a file that is of a frame dimension and frame rate that is commonly interlaced (like most sd, 29.97fps footage would be) it assumes it is interlaced and automatically decides to separate fields (lower).

if the footage is not interlaced, this usually results in jaggy edges or a field doubling look.

if you have a clip that looks bad in preview, select it in the project window and look at the top of that window. it should describe the footage attributes and one thing it probably says it ‘separating fields (lower)’.

to fix that simply choose file>interpret footage>main and set ‘separate fields’ to ‘off’.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Roger Lansing]

Dave and Kevin,
I very much appreciate your help on this.

Kevin, I went through the project and did the reinterpretation that you suggested. You were right, the QT file attributes stated “separating fields.” After reinterpretation, though, the files look the same. I have a couple of Digital Juice animations in this project that did not have the problem with “separating fields” but they also look jagged and reinterpretation isn’t working on them, either.

The file types for each of the QT movies is listed as “AJA Quicktime Movie”. Could the AJA card be causing this problem?

Roger C. Lansing

Multi-Media Production Coordinator
National Baseball Hall of Fame

Cooperstown, NY

[Kevin Camp]

it could be ae’s pixel aspect ratio correction for previews…

at the bottom of the preview window there are a bunch of buttons and dropdowns, towards the right side of those options is one that looks like a rectangle with a 2-headed arrow above it. that’s the pixel aspect ratio correction button/option.

click it to toggle the par correction. if your comp is using non-square pixels, you should see the frame change aspect ratios, when the comp looks squeezed, the footage should look smooth, when the comp looks normal, the footage may look jaggy in preview, but it will look fine anywhere else.

if this is the problem, there is script that can set it to do ‘high quality’ par correction. the script is called throttle. i think cs5 has a preference setting that can enable this feature without the script.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Roger Lansing]

Kevin,

That didn’t seem to do anything about the pixelization. The aspect ration did change when toggling the par button, but the video did not look any better.

Roger C. Lansing

Multi-Media Production Coordinator
National Baseball Hall of Fame

Cooperstown, NY