True lossless renders?

[Eric Barker]

Ahhh, that looks like an aspect ratio issue. I’m seeing, what looks to be, tearing from horizontal stretching.

Are you going to be ending up with NTSC? PAL? HD? Or square pixel format (computer/web)? If you’re working with NTSC (which I’m guessing you are, from the resolution of those screen shots), remember that you’re working with non-square pixels (width is 90% of height). This means that if you want the best conversion quality from After Effects to Avid/FCP/Premiere, you’re going to want to start with an NTSC (0.9) 720×480 composition. Right now, it looks like it’s having to drop or stretch some of the virtical lines in order to match the resolution of your Avid project.

It could also just be on your monitor. AE has a “Aspect Ratio Correction” button on the viewer that attempts to account for non-square aspect ratios on a computer monitor (square pixelx). Avid might have a similar thing. When those options are turned on, the software doesn’t bother to do any complex resizing, so usually it just discards one pixel every so often. So it could just be the product of viewing NTSC resolution material on a computer monitor.

Give me an idea with what format you’re working from in After Effects, and what you’re going to be working with in Avid. That doesn’t look like a compression issue at all.

[Sean Emer]

thank you for the response! I am still a film student in college, so I have a lot to learn about the technicalities in digital media. My AE comp is on the D1/DV NTSC setting (0.9). In avid my import settings (relevant to frame size) are as follows:

Under ‘Aspect Ratio, Pixel Aspect’ I have selected ‘Maintain, non-square’ This is out of a choice of ‘601, non-square’, ‘Maintain, non-square’, ‘Maintain, square’, and ‘Maintain and Resize, square’

Under File Field Order, I have chosen Non-interlaced.

The final cut will be heading to DVD for reproduction and sale, so it may be viewed on both TVs and Computers (so… what now? haha)

You mentioned that some programs mayu automatically adjust the aspect ratio for previewing? I’ve seen those warnings in Photoshop and AE, but never in Avid, so I’m not sure what to think.

Any further help would be great!

[Eric Barker]

Well, unfortunatly, I’ve never worked with Avid. I work mainly with Premiere and Final Cut, myself. Not sure what that “maintain” thing is about, either, anyone an Avid expert?

I’m guessing that there are presets somewhere that are more along the lines of standard video formats. For TV/DVD, you’re going to want NTSC which is:

– interlaced video (not progressive scan)
– 720×480
– 4:3 aspect ratio, with non-square pixels (0.9).
– 30 frames per second (which is 60 FIELDS per second)

You’re also going to want to exchange the files in one of two ways: DV compression for standard video. And uncompressed video with “millions+ colors” if you want transparency (alpha channel).

In After Effects, at the bottom of the viewer window, there are 4 little buttons on the far right. The left-most button toggels the aspect ratio correction.

What may be happening is that you’re completely fine. If you don’t have an external TV monitor hooked up, you won’t know for sure until you burn a DVD and play it. What may just be going on is that the aspect ratio correction in the Avid viewer window may be pretty crappy, but what really will go on TV will be fine. Test it out to make sure.

[Sean Emer]

Thanks for the tips, and I would have an external CRT monitor for this kind of thing but its packed up for a big shoot coming up, so I’m flying blidn, as it were.

I’m gonna screw around for a little while, and if I find an answer, I’ll post it back here in case anybody else has an issue like this.

[Erik Pontius]

Here’s a couple of tips. I use Avid daily on a professional level, build most of my graphics and such in AE.

You can use your current settings dv/d1 720×480.
Export out of AE using the Quicktime Animation codec at full quality. The other advantage of the Animation codec in addition to being a lossless codec, is that it can also carry an alpha channel.
Change your render settings to generate fields. Choose lower fields first. You’ll find that your text will look crisper by generating fields rather than none.

Import into Avid, Choose “601/709 non-square”. Since you’ve created the graphic in an RGB space, choose the option for RGB. Choose lower fields first. If you have an alpha channel, set it to invert alpha..if not choose ignore.

You’ll have much better results.

Erik

[Sean Emer]

thanks for that tip! I don’t know what I would do without this forum, haha!

[Sean Emer]

Alright I did as you suggested with the Animation codec etc. etc., and I’m seeing the same quality response in Avid, so tomorrow morning I’m just going to burn a test DVD since I’m suspecting now this is more an issue of Avid’s preview display than my render settings etc.

[Erik Pontius]

Yeah…don’t ever trust Avid’s preview monitors, it’s going to be doing de-interlacing and other things. Really need to have a good video outs to a calibrated studio monitor.

Erik

[Sean Emer]

I’d hook my monitor up right now, but the only analog to digital converter I have is an old advc100, and it doesn’t work anymore. My dsr-45 is on our A machine for media transfers and higher budget cuts, so oh well. I’ll be back at school soon, so I’ll find a way to get a monitor working up there.

Thanks for all the help guys.

If only life had ‘Ctrl-Z’

[Brendan Coots]

Just two minor quibbles with this advice – NTSC is 29.97, not 30fps. There was a time when everyone knew you meant 29.97 when you say 30fps, but these days there are a million valid frame rates, including 30fps.

Also, exporting graphics from AE in the DV codec is not the greatest idea. You will crush your graphics horribly (immediately reducing them to 4:1:1 and 25Mbps) by doing this. If the edit is based on the DV codec then your editing app will output the graphics in this format along with everything else, but you always want to render uncompressed from AE (unless you are using a hardware card like Blackmagic).

Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com