What Image Resolution to Work with in AE ?

[Jeremy Allen]

If you are using at least PS CS3:

File > New

Preset: Film and Video

Size: NTSC DV

This will give you a 720×480 file with the proper aspect ratio, and it will also give you title safe and action safe guides.

This will work if you are only animating position. But, as Dave said, you will need larger images if you plan on scaling or zooming in past 100% of the original size.

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8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.2
DualCore G5 2.0 GHZ, 2GB RAM, OSX 10.4.11

AE CS3

[Ryan Holmes]

Not to put more on your plate but you’re also going to want to consider the codec you render out in. The DV NTSC codec isn’t exactly know for sharp crisp edges and high quality. If you aim towards an Uncompressed codec or an Animation codec you’ll probably retain the highest quality. But keep in mind rendering in those formats creates very large files.

You also may look into rendering your timeline as an image sequence. It basically makes each frame into a still picture that you can import into virtually any editing software.

Ryan

[Steve Roberts]

[Ryan Holmes] “If you aim towards an Uncompressed codec or an Animation codec you’ll probably retain the highest quality.”

… until it comes time for the final render. If Ben wants to render to DV out of AE, rendering to unc/Anim/TGA won’t give better quality if he’s just going to encode that to DV right away.

Of course, it will preserve quality if the movie requires more processing in other apps before the eventual render to DV.

[Brendan Coots]

As has been mentioned, computer monitors and television screens DO NOT respect DPI settings, both devices are essentially 72DPI and that’s it. Because of this, it is NOT a good practice to use DPI settings when designing for video of any kind. All you are doing is confusing the issue (and yourself) by adding a secondary parameter to adjust, rather than just using pixel dimensions to determine the size of your canvas. Case in point – the poster’s question is partially based on confusion around this very issue. Stick to 72DPI and size your project dimensions accordingly, and you’ll be better off.

As for the original question, any time you import an asset into After Effects with standard video dimensions (such as 720×480), it assumes things about that asset. For 720×480 imports, After Effects will assume that it is a rectangular pixel, DV video asset and treat it accordingly. Since computer based art is square pixel-based, you don’t want this. There are many techniques, but the easiest is to design your PS projects at 722×482 or some such number so that AE doesn’t interpret it and it imports as-is.

I tend to do my video design work in Photoshop at twice the target resolution (in your case, 1440×960) to give me wiggle room if I need to scale the artwork in AE or something. As long as you have a powerful workstation and don’t plan on using many dozens of layers in this way, it isn’t a bad way to work.

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

[Brendan Coots]

Let’s take a big step back for a second. Your questions point to the fact that you aren’t happy with the quality level/crispness of your product, which indicates that something went wrong somewhere in your process. Here are some possible scenarios:

1. You started working at 72dpi, then changed that to 150dpi thinking it would increase quality. All you did was scale your image up which degrades image quality, not enhance it.
SOLUTION – Revert to a previous save before you scaled the file. If you don’t have a previous save, you can change your dpi settings back to 72dpi but the damage is already somewhat “baked into your cake.”

2. You set up a project in Photoshop by typing in 720×480 dimensions, instead of using the photoshop DV preset. Photoshop’s video presets set the proper pixel aspect ratio on the file, whereas just typing 720×480 into your project settings results in a square pixel file (square pixel is 1:1 PAR, whereas DV is 0.9:1). If you import a square pixel, 720×480 file into After Effects, it will assume (based on the file’s physical dimensions) that it is 0.9 aspect ratio DV and treat it as rectangular pixels, screwing everything up.
SOLUTION – Once you start designing in square pixel, you can’t change the Photoshop settings to DV aspect ratio without having to completely modify your artwork OR squeeze the entire image, degrading the image quality. A possible solution is to NOT use the DV preset, but rather change the image size slightly (say, 722×482, square pixel) so AE doesn’t “see” it as a 720×480 rectangular pixel DV file and imports it as-is. Even this may not solve your quality problem, however, because the best approach is to design for the medium from the start.

3. Your project settings in AE are wrong. If you use a DV preset it will, like Photoshop, set the correct aspect ratio settings (.9).
SOLUTION – Make sure you didn’t just type 720×480 into your project settings, but rather used the DV preset so that the aspect ratio (and resulting pixel aspect ratio) are set correctly. All of your settings from beginning to end need to match the final output requirement. In this case, that means DV NTSC (720×480) with a 4:3 aspect ratio and 0.9 pixel aspect ratio.

4. Your output settings are wrong, compressed or something else that is resulting in image degradation.
SOLUTION – Always output from After Effects to Quicktime Animation Codec (create a “master” video), and use a third party tool for your compressed, “distribution” videos. There are free tools to do this all over the internet. TmpgEnc 4 Xpress is a good, cheap tool, and Super © is free. Google both to see your options.

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

[Ben Matt]

THANK YOU SO MUCH !!

This was very helpful and indeed answered my question.
I saw the preset in Photoshop, but was unsure how to use it. It gave the guides for safe text and safe animation, but I am unsure how to interpret that. What does that mean and how should I design in that preset template ? What should be inside the middle box, and what can go over into the bigger box?

But I will experiment with all of this. Thank you for clearing everything up for me ! I really appreciate this !!

Cheers 🙂

[Brendan Coots]

Glad it all worked out! Here’s how to approach the template guides:

Title Safe (inner-most guide): All titles should fall within this boundary. Even if the video is for the web, this is the “comfort zone” for text. It originated from older TV sets, described below.

Action Safe (outer-most guide): No important action, elements, borders etc. should fall outside of this guide if you want them to be seen properly. The frame of tube-based TV sets tends to cut off the outer-most 10% of the screen, which is why this is used, and it also explains why your titles should fall within title-safe – to keep them from coming right up against the edge of the TV frame.

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