text not sharp / widescreen

[Tim Kurkoski]

What font are you using? What are you doing to it in the comp? AE is very capable of producing sharp text (and does anti-alias by default), but there are lots of factors at work. Zooming or scaling, for example, can throw you off. Do you have the quality switch for the layer set to highest quality?

As for the cropping, it would help if you explain your workflow, and how it’s cropped. I’m not sure I grasp how you’re exporting and what you’re seeing.

[Frank Keyner]

Ok,

I got some videoclips at 720×576 (Recorded with Sony DCR-HC42E) Widescreen.
My comp settings are PAL D1/DV Widescreen 720×576. Pixel aspect ratio is D1/DV PAL widescreen (1,42)frame aspect ratio 16:9.
The first thing, as i look to my sequence it looks cropped. So i turn pixel aspect ratio correction on. Now it displays correct.

When i put text on in it looks distorted/bad . When i disable pixel aspect ratio correction, it looks ok.

I want to render widescreen, but it doesn’t. I renderd avi and it says 720×576 but it isn’t. It’s cropped.
Why can’t i render the movie how it looks on the sequence with pixel aspect ratio correction on.
Same for the text 🙁

[Tim Kurkoski]

I get the sense that when you say “cropped”, you really mean “squished”. That is to say that none of the image is missing, it’s all just squeezed into a space smaller than you expected.

This would likely be a pixel aspect ratio problem, but before continuing we’ll just confirm that it’s what you’re getting and not something else.

[Frank Keyner]

Yes that is true.

I think i solved it.

When i gonna render i clicked the stretch button and stretched it to 720×576. Now it’s look ok and with sharp text.

But how come, i used the settings 720×576, so why i need also the option streched?

[Enzo Tedeschi]

Just to leave no stone unturned… When you see your “cropped” image, do you have black bars on the left and right of the comp?

Sometimes if your widescreen footage hasn’t been digitised with the 16:9 flag on, AE will import it as 4:3. If you drop the footage into a 16:9 comp, it will pillarbox it, thinking it’s 4:3. Check your footage attributes by right clicking the footage in your project window and selecting “Interpret Footage” (I think that’s the name of the command…) and you’ll get a dialog where you can set the aspect ratio of the footage to 16:9, to match your comp. You may have already have this covered, but it’s worth checking.

If not, maybe you could post some screenshots of how it looks so we can all be on the same page?

e.

Enzo Tedeschi
____________________________
Editor
Sydney, Australia

[Frank Keyner]

I found that yes, and it’s interped as 16:9

And there are no black bars…

What screenshots do you want, then i will make them.
thx

[Enzo Tedeschi]

I’d like to see your “cropping” – before and after your aspect ratio display correction…?

e.

Enzo Tedeschi
____________________________
Editor
Sydney, Australia