Shooting/Editing for unusual display: 720×2560

[Shane Ross]

This is something you put together in After Effects. I don’t have personal experience with this, but I know people who have. They all used AE.

Shane

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[Jason Myres]

A couple thoughts:

-Final Cut Pro can’t handle greater than a 2k frame size so you’ll probably have to edit this in an application that can, like After Effects.

-The easiest thing to do would be to shoot at 1920×1080 with a DSLR, then crop and stretch to fit your final output. But, assuming you need this to be pixel for pixel, you’ll have to splice together the images from two different clips, and then crop down to your final size. That should be pretty easy to do in AE, so hopefully your client is OK with that, creatively speaking.

-If they are not, and it needs to be one continuous video that will fill the entire frame, then you’ll need a camera with a large frame size like a Red One.

-Once you’ve created your video, you can crop and output to your target frame size using the render queue in After Effects.

-Another thing to consider, might be creating a project with your target frame size right from the beginning in After Effects, then filling it with video and motion graphics components to make it look like one seamless composition, but that may be outside what your client is looking for.

-If you don’t know After Effects well, I’d find someone who does to help you. Either that, or hopefully you have a lot of time to experiment.

Sounds cool though. Good luck.

JM

[Kenny Powerass]

I don’t have After Effects, but once it was mentioned I opened up a Motion project using the ‘Presentation – Large’ preset and created my custom aspect ratio. Then I dropped in some DSLR footage that had been transfered to Prores. Looks pretty good. (Though I own Motion, I have very little experience with it, so I’m guessing with the Presentation preset.)
Is the best move to go from DSLR to Prores, edit in Final Cut, then export a QT file and resize it in Motion?
Am I able to edit Prores in Final Cut and then export it back at the original quality (before the Prores compression)? Because what I’ve done looks good on my monitor, but I think the display this is destined for is around six feet tall.
Thanks again!

[Steve Eisen]

Personally, I do not think you are cut out to do this job. No offense.

Find someone that can do it the right way and pay them or turn the job down.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Mark Petereit]

I agree with Steve. Never, NEVER pretend to be an expert in front of the client when you really don’t have a clue what you’re doing. I have earned the trust of many of my clients by telling them straight up that I had never done the type of work they were asking for, but that I’d move heaven and earth to figure it out for them.

INTEGRITY is your most valuable commodity. Set expectations low and over-deliver. And be ready to shift into consultant mode at any time and hand off the project to an agency that can deliver the goods, even if it means little or no profit for you (even a loss if you can absorb it and you really want to retain the client.)

Always remember: clients don’t pay for DO, they pay for DONE.

[Jeremy Garchow]

2560 is 1280×2.

Shoot 1280×720, turn it vertical and double the vertical. Whenever I have had to edit at an odd aspect ratio, I edit in a normal one first. So in your case, I’d edit 1280×720 and turn my monitor to the vertical. Youwpuldnthej edit, dividing the screen in half to represent your final two monitors. At the end, InwpuldnAutoduck to AE, make the appropriate size comp, and scale te footage and elements back up to 100% if using 720p elements. I’ve done this many times for screens that are extremely wide, but no vertical. It should work the same way, but you will have to get used to all of your controls/parameters having an offset of +/- 90 degrees.

[Walter Soyka]

[Kenny Powerass] “Here are the specs I was given : 1. Create content in the following square pixel size 720 Pixels wide and 2560 Pixels High.”

These are the delivery requirements, but what’s the creative? You’ll have to design a workflow that starts with the creative and ends in that deliverable.

[Jason Myres] “Final Cut Pro can’t handle greater than a 2k frame size so you’ll probably have to edit this in an application that can, like After Effects.”

After Effects is a great compositor, but a lousy NLE. When I do non-standard AR projects, I offline in FCP and online in AE.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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[Jason Brown]

Ive done some non standard frame sizes and after affects can easily do what ur asking.

[Jason Myres]

[Walter Soyka] “After Effects is a great compositor, but a lousy NLE. When I do non-standard AR projects, I offline in FCP and online in AE.”

Totally agree. If he has to cut together something complex, he’s in for some fun. But, none of us know the creative requirements, so it may just be a few clips strung together. But, at 720×2560, I’d imagine it’s a short loop of some sort.

JM

[Jeremy Garchow]

To clean up my iPhone gibberish:

2560 = 1280 x 2.

Shoot 1280×720, turn it vertical and double the vertical. Whenever I have had to edit at an odd aspect ratio, I edit in a normal one first. So in your case, I’d edit 1280×720 and turn my monitor to the vertical. You would then edit, dividing the screen in half to represent your final two monitors. At the end, I would Autoduck to AE, make the appropriate size comp, and scale the footage and elements back up to 100% if using 720p elements.

I’ve done this many times for screens that are extremely wide, but not vertical. It should work the same way, but you will have to get used to all of your controls/parameters having an offset of +/- 90 degrees.

Hope that makes better sense now.

Jeremy