[Benjamin Von cramon]

A delayed response, just returning to this project. I had been able to roundtrip Avid to AE and back and maintain Rec 709, my issue having been those graphics added sometimes in AE atop the video layer. You said to ensure I my footage was coming in to AE Rec 709, which in the Project tab was actually presenting in the monitor profile, sRGB…, but since I was maintaining Rec 709 in that footage (back in Avid the cut between original and AE output showed no shift), I wondered what difference it made, but thought okay, let’s interpret that clip into Rec 709, new output no difference. I set the Project to Rec 709, no difference. I thought let’s throw levels on the graphics to bring them into 16-233, but levels in AE doesn’t display those values, then discovered the filter, levels: computer to video (16-233), which produced the unpredicted effect of jacking up setup way beyond 16. This is when I first posted. I questioned why this filter wouldn’t work, tried it again, this time (different day with restart between) it worked, go figure, maybe some system-level hiccup. So, now I’m good with video and graphics, except, I noticed a certain sequence was still coming in with computer levels. As I scrubbed through the clip in Avid inspecting the waveform, I noticed the setup dropped below legal only in a particular region, realized this region was where I had dropped opacity in a graphic to in effect drop the levels, background set to black. So, that pointed to AEs background not respecting the project setting of Rec709. I then created a new solid instead set to black, applied the levels:computer to video filter to it, now that section produced legal.

What’s now weird, and maybe I confused myself somewhere along so many tests with notes, and maybe my system introduced another hiccup, but now that I dialed in how to handle 0-255 graphics, solids, etc. when I output that not interpreting the footage and not setting project to Rec 709, which never posed a problem before roundtripping just the video (for noise reduction and such), when I now put it all together, all of a sudden my video levels were dropping below legal. I went back to interpret footage to Rec 709, Project settings to Rec 709, use of levels: computer to video on all graphics, that’s the way. Any idea what explains why I was forced back this direction, I’d be curious, but not to lose sleep if I never know ;^)

[Benjamin Von cramon]

Hi Dave,

I haven’t worked in SD for a while, part of my problem is I can’t distinguish between the expected ugliness of jaggies inherent to SD from what I might be introducing because of render and import settings. I followed your very logical advice, setup comp in AE to DV widescreen, which reads, “D1/DV NTSC Widescreen (1.21)”, used Avid DV codec, so 720×480, then simply linked via AMA to that output. Still looks like crap, but I’m hoping optimized crap. When I display Pixel Aspect Ratio in Avid, this is the weird part. All my clips that I imported, as opposed to linking via AMA, show 1.2 for pixel aspect ratio. One file I linked to via AMA (previously encoded from Cinematize to Avid DV widescreen) shows 1.0 for pixel aspect, but looks normal, as do the imported clips showing 1.2. Then, especially strange, the output from AE shows .889, but looks normal too in terms of not stretched, just crappy jaggies. I also see the jaggies are mainly on pan/scans of super crisp digital photography, the archival B&Ws aren’t all aliased. So, any idea why these various pixel aspect ratios? Thanks.