[Bret Williams]

Can’t you just change the sequence to anamorphic? Problem solved. In fact, the right way to do it from the beginning. Anamporphic footage in an anamorphic sequence.

[Bret Williams]

Does it support TC now? It didn’t originally. So sure you could capture a clip, but I thought it didn’t capture TC info – for that sole purpose of keeping it from being a rough cut or capture solution.

[Bret Williams]

No need to make a comp a particular size. Do it all in the render que.

Drop your DV file into a DV comp just as normal. On output, simply output at 320×240. Non-field rendered. 15fps. 22khz mono, 16bit, etc.

[Bret Williams]

[Harvola] “greetings. i’m an old school motion graphics designer trying to keep up.

i want to use AFX to prep my show reel files for the web.

my web builder is going to convert whatever i give him to .flv
he says just make them the pixel size i want with lossless compression,
and he’ll convert them.

my originals are NTSC DV 720×480 .mov – with stereo audio at 41.100

a friend recommended shrinking them to iPod video size 320×240,
but that is a mathematic reduction of a DV Square Pixel size 720×540.

(i’ve read the CC tutorial on square pixels but it didn’t really tell me
what i should do in this case)

should i render my new smaller size comps in SQUARE PIXELS ?
should i just reduce to half size (360×240) or should i force-fit to 320×240
or should i crop slightly to 320×240 ?

should i consider field or non-field render ?
should i reduce the audio to mono to save bandwidth ?

another friend recommends Sorenson Squeeze but i am comfortable in AFX.”

Your friend is right. Render your comp to 320×240. Which if you know your math is the same as 4:3, which IS the same as non-square 720×480, or square 720×534. 720×480 is NON-SQUARE pixels, which can only be shown properly by a television, not computers. Computers only deal with square pixels. So yes, force fit your 720×480 to 320×240. Do not field render as computers don’t play back fields and it will look like mush. I personally think the best way to save bandwidth is to reduce to 15fps AND make it mono. Keep it 16 bit but you can reduce to 22khz or 32khz.

320×240 is actually 1/4 the size, not half.

[Bret Williams]

And then cmd+3 to go to timeline. I think that’s right…

You really don’t understand why someone would want to zoom in on the canvas? Precise placement of text, cropping, masking (garbage matte), that sort of stuff.

[Bret Williams]

Well it all depends. For the site you’re trying to design it defiitely won’t work.

For what you’re trying to accomplish, I’d do a lot of it in imageready and create slices. Do the right hand side links in imageready with the text done IN imageready. On the left, I’d just leave it completely blank tan. The resulting table spit out by imageready (save as html) can be the basis for your design in DW.

I’d create each individual icon separately, but with a matching tan bgrnd. Then in DW I’d make the slice for the left area be a bgrnd image. Then create a table within that sliced area (cell) and give it the appropriate rows/columns. Add each icon to a row, then align it left and place the text to the right. Set the width so that it can’t expand or intefere with the table.

Keep the logo across the top and don’t let it drop down into the page like it does now.

Etc. It gets complex and it’s pretty daunting design for a first site, with the curves and all. You could do the whole thing with layers, but it gets complex trying to keep layers aligned in the right place as one expands the browser.

Here’s a good example with some instruction on how to keep layers positioned…
https://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/thebox/deadcentre2.html

[Bret Williams]

Doh! I just noticed the Cataphora site can’t handle changing the font size on my browser, after I warned Zack about it. 🙂

[Bret Williams]

Hey Curtis-

That cataphora site is some really nice work. But I’m looking on my wife’s 1024 display! I’ll have to check it on the cinema display, although even on that display I usually keep the safari window at about 1000 anyway. But I’ll max it and see how it feels.

I think also another newbie problem that Zack is having is he’s trying to align text items OVER a background. That is almost never possible except with advanced CSS which I don’t think he’s ready for, nor does his design require it.

But Zack, trying to get the text to land in a ceratin area, even at a specific rez, won’t work. You also have to factor in that people can adjust their text size on their own. So even if they have the 1280 screen maxed out, they might increase the text size which would throw off your layout.

Look into using tables and cells with fixed widths for some things, percentage widths for others like Curtis mentined as well. And if you want to use background elements, they can’t really be specific if text goes over them. Trying to put a logo or text in the background, then adding html text over it and hoping they don’t overlap with word wrap just won’t happen.

A design I did similar to Curtis is https://www.wedgephoto.com where the cells stretch to match the browser size. This one stretches in 4 directions and is definitely pushing it because different browsers seem to think different attributes take precendence over others and don’t quite display the page the same way. So I split the difference and it looks different, but acceptable on the major browsers.

[Bret Williams]

I don’t see how you could do that. Sorry.

[Bret Williams]

If you bring a 720×480 non-square (.9) image into a 640×480 AE comp, AE will do the work for you and it will fit as they are actually the same size image. In other words, they both fill the same 4:3 space. You’ll not have to adjust anything.