[Andy George]

Angela,

There are a couple of ways to go about it.

You could keep it all in AE.
Drop your 1080 comp into a NTSC DV comp.
Then with the 1080 comp selected go to layer>Transform>fit to comp width.
This will scale your spot to the appropriate letter-box

If your center punching you want to scale the spot to fit the comp
height. Of course this will cut of the sides of your video so
you want to plan ahead for that
(like use 4:3 guides in AE on your 16:9 comp so that you know where it will
be cut off when your compositing)

Before you render go into your render settings under time sampeling
and select Field Render: Lower field first. This will give you
an interlaced version of the spot instead of the default progressive.

If you keep your frame rate at 29.97 in your HD comp you wont have
to worry about converting it to 29.97 when you render your NTSC version.

Of course your probably going to have to get it into an editing application
like final cut, Premier, or Avid in order to actually print to tape so all of this
could be done in that respective application as well

-Andy

[Andy George]

Hi Sathish,

I believe there are only three stock answers, at least that’s all I could find
Searching the forum here. You may have to ask the man himself if he has a
larger collection stashed somewhere 🙂

Dave’s Stock Answer #2:

When you’re out on a shoot, and you say, “we’ll fix this in post” without knowing PRECISELY HOW you’re going to fix it in post, don’t shoot it! You’ll only end up shooting it over again.

Since post typically costs three times the cost of production, fixing something in post is not a way to save money, but rather a way to spend more of it.

And, before you say “well fix it in post,” always consider who’s doing the work, especially if you’re the one doing the work.

Dave’s Stock Answer #3:

Don’t use AE to compress files for final delivery. The various compressors are there only to make quick ‘n dirty files showing a project’s progress to producers, clients, the kids, etc. AE is incapable of doing multipass encoding, a crucial feature that greatly improves the image quality of H.264 and MPEG-type files in particular.

Render a high-quality file from AE, and use a different application to do the compression. Popular ones are Adobe Media Encoder, Sorenson Squeeze and Apple’s Compressor, which comes bundled with Final Cut Suite. Even compressing in Quicktime Pro is better than compressing in AE.

Making good-looking compressed files is almost as much an art as it is a science. It is NOT straightforward at all. I recommend asking a few questions at the COW’s Compression Techniques forum.

-Andy

[Andy George]

Randall,

Here is a tutorial for setting up text on a reflective surface,
and animating a camera move.

Same principle only using your logo.

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/reflections.php

The “glossy effect” can be replicated using the CC lightsweep effect.
Animating the position of the light sweep over time-

-Andy

[Andy George]

Hi Angela,

[Angela Yuhas] “Is there a format out there that more stations seem to prefer over others?”

If your shipping around to numerous individual stations (like it sounds) your probably going to be asked to send your spot as NTSC standard Definition.

The most common formats your going to get requests for are Beta Sp, Digi Beta, DV Cam, Mini DV, or DVCPro.
There seems to be a growing number of stations that will also accept a digital delivery via FTP

I have had stations say to me “just make me a DVD” (shudder)
This generally means your talking to a sales person 🙂
Ask to speak to the person that is actually going to be processing the
spot.

Here is big question you want to explore-
Do you want to make an HD (16:9) spot that will be letterboxed (or center punched)
upon conversion to 4:3 NTSC
or do you need a 4:3 NTSC spot that will not require any conversion before printing?

It’s really an aesthetic question more than anything, and a conversation with the client
on the topic will probably be necessary.

Personally, if the client does not have a preference I prefer to make everything HD 1920×1080.
(as large as possible) That way I know Im ready for any scenario, and it will compress beautifully for web if needed. Of course I have a really fast system that can support working in these resolutions so you want to take that in consideration if your working on a laptop.

What the TV station wants does not really play into the codec you use when rendering from AE.
You should always create a master using a lossless codec like animation or prores.
How you print to tape from there really depends on your setup.

-Andy

[Andy George]

Stephen,
Are you working with footage? If so what Codec?

-Andy

[Andy George]

Stephen,

Can you provide some more details about your system? What version AE ect..

Do you have openGL rendering enabled? That causes all sorts of crazy problems.

-Andy

[Andy George]

Hi Joseph,

I don’t think your going to find any good answers to this question.
MP4 is an interframe codec and not suitable for working with in AE.
As such none of the professionals here use it for compositing work.

Your best route would be to convert your video to something else first.

Dave LaRonde explains:

Dave’s Stock Answer #1:

If the footage you imported into AE is any kind of the following — footage in an HDV acquisition codec, MPEG1, MPEG2, AVCHD, mp4, mts, m2t, H.261 or H.264 — you need to convert it to a different codec.

These kinds of footage use temporal, or interframe compression. They have keyframes at regular intervals, containing complete frame information. However, the frames in between do NOT have complete information. Interframe codecs toss out duplicated information.

In order to maintain peak rendering efficiency, AE needs complete information for each and every frame. But because these kinds of footage contain only partial information, AE freaks out, resulting in a wide variety of problems.

-Andy

[Andy George]

Hi John,

960×720 uses non square pixels to create a 1280×720 image. Do you have the “toggle pixel aspect ratio” button selected? This tells AE to convert your non-square pixels to a square pixel preview. It’s under your composition preview and looks like a box with a line over it.

Your comp should be setup as DVCPro HD 720 23.976

-Andy

[Andy George]

Eric,

You need to increase the duration of your composition. CMND+K will bring up this
dialogue.

-Andy

[Andy George]

Hi Anthony,

The speed of your Ram Preview is really dependent upon what’s happening in
your composition. It’s hard to tell from your video exactly what’s going
on in your comp but Im guessing it’s got a lot of 3D layers and effects applied.
Can you provide some more details on your composition?

4 gigs of Ram is not going to buy you a very long preview. Especially in an HD composition.

Do you have “enable multiple Processors” selected? If so that may be slowing you down as well.
You don’t have enough Ram to run more than 1 core at a time. Check out Todd Kopriva’s
article on the subject-

https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2009/12/performance-tip-dont-starve-yo.html

-Andy