Sound problem and a quick aspect ratio question…

[Sam Moulton]

for aspect ratios and comps please just always use the presets. Your numbers appear to be correct, but if it says custom in the comp settings then something’s probably wrong.

for your sound question, what are your render settings? what codec are you using, what are your sound settings?

[Adam Mcewen]

Cheers for the reply sam,

No, there is no custom. It looks like wide screen when i view it with the toggle pixel aspect ratio correction button on, when i flick that off it squashes everything to what looks like 4:3. It ram previews fine but when i test rendered, it looked like it does with the button off. Any other ideas?

For the sound, the file is a wav and i am rendering out as a quicktime .mov file. I have tried no compression, H.264, sorrenson 3, MPEG4. The audio settings are at 44.100khz, 16bit and stereo, i have tried changing these and using compression and a different message sometimes apears when i do this:

After effects error: opening sound component (-2166). (10::44)

[Sam Moulton]

Most QT codecs don’t embed the par info so they only display square pixels. If you want to render for the web or other devices I’d suggest dropping your widescreen comp in an appropriately sized square pixel comp for rendering. If you’re going to put this in a NLE to to complete or send to tape or DVD then use the the default sizes. Your QT preview will not look right unless you’ve got QT pro and save the file with the appropriate display size, but DVD’s and your NLE will handle the files just fine if you make sure that they are interpreted properly.

As for the audio, if rendering to DV set the sample rate to 48.

What kind of audio is in the original file? If it’s an mp3 convert it before you bring it into AE.

[Adam Mcewen]

Cheers for the widescreen advice.

The audio is still a problem though. The original file is a wav. Just for future reference, should mp3’s be converted because they click by any chance. That is another problem i was having on a few previous projects, not herd it in this one yet so fingers crossed.

[Darby Edelen]

[AdamMc] “Just for future reference, should mp3’s be converted because they click by any chance.”

Most professional programs aren’t designed to work smoothly with mp3s as they are highly compressed. It’s like using an MPEG-4 for compositing, just not good practice (and slow due to AE needing to deal with the compression).

As far as clicking in the audio, that’s usually a problem with the audio sample rate of the file, you should almost always use 48kHz.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Adam Mcewen]

Thanks for the advice Darby, Dave, i appreciate the help.

Im not sure what is wrong specifically, i just keep getting the same ‘After Effects error: Opening audio compressor movie — Bad parameter (-50). (44::74)’ message when i try to make movie, heres the wierd bit though: i just tried to render without any audio in the comps atall and the same message comes up! Im baffled and starting to get slightly worried! (This is a major project for my degree with deadlines on the horizon).

I have tried to render out of ableton with different audio settings but that doesnt seem to make a difference. Any more ideas??!

Adam

[Adam Mcewen]

I’v made a note of all your sugestions and im going to try the stuff in the previous post at a later time if the problem carries on. For now im happy to go with doing the final render in an external editor. If i leave the audio unchecked in the render settings in after effects then it will render the video fine, so im going to do what you suggested dave for the time being, and match the audio and rendered video in an editing programme.

Thanks again everyone, appreciate the help.
Adam