[Charlie Hughes]

This was the answer. Thank you. I had scaled the keyframes and only those scaled were effected by the weirdness.

Thanks for your help. I’m glad you responded.

[Charlie Hughes]

You guys are wicked.

Okay so I should leave my files alone then… AE assumes square pixels on these files, and i’ve been re interpreting as D1/DV NTSC Widescreen. I will stop doing this.

BUT!

If i bring a file in with an alpha channel it will often look (a psd layer) distorted. The aspect ratio warps it. I can’t ignore this, even if it adjusts later on, can i?

A warped image will rotate strangely and look awful in the comp, am i to trust that it will unwarp?

[Charlie Hughes]

Really.
Shit.
What about After Effects 7.0?

[Charlie Hughes]

Ah, there it is…

Thank you for your patience!

[Charlie Hughes]

I went into the After Effects menu at the top of the interface. Holding shift, i clicked the after effects window, scrolled to preferences, and then clicked general.

The general preferences is just a bunch of check boxes, including:

Show Tool Tips
Tabbed Windows
Close Multiple Views Simultaneously.

I doubt the secret menu would appear here, under the “Use System Shortcut Keys”.

So perhaps I’m accessing the general prefs incorrectly. Do i NOT click General, but rather just get to the window in which general is an option and there beneath general would be a secret preferences option?

Like, as in, go After Effects > Preferences > DO NOT CLICK ANYTHING. and wait for Secret to be among the preferences options within the After Effects menu?

If you’re being clear and i’m not following, i apologize.

[Charlie Hughes]

Hmm.

Shift doesn’t appear to be doing anything. Is this a pc and mac function? No drop down seems to be manifesting in the general.

I’m going to try to figure out what ‘proxies’ are all about now.

Thanks for your help 🙂

[Charlie Hughes]

Now that i’ve mixed it all up… is scaling to compensate for the warping a bad solution?

I’m taking several movie files, all “appearing” slightly warped (but exported at 720×405). Will i run into problems down the road if I simply scale these things against the ratio warping?

Will i lose image quality?

Also, if anybody cares to simplify. To avoid all this in the future, when exporting from Photoshop I should look out for aspect ratio and make sure it matches the AE comp? Is that all the problem is?

(thanks for all the help by the way, I’m in over my head)

[Charlie Hughes]

720×405 has always been the stage size I use for my stuff. I’m working on my demo reel, now I’m worried that with this interpreting footage issue I’ll have to re export with different settings, all my movie files! Arg.

I”ll check out the suggested Tutorial, I’m just confused as to why I export everything the same ratio, and when I import my movies they’re all whacky sizes.

[Charlie Hughes]

Jeeez. I didn’t even think I sounded that harsh! You guys sure stick together. Alright, I apologize to the guy that was trying to help. Clearly, now that I think about it, he didn’t read my question in the first place. There’s no way he would have given that answer if he even read the first paragraph, since I directly addressed that, which was why i was surprised. I’ve figured out how to deal with this problem, thanks. Sorry if I hurt any feelings on here, I’m officially feeling bad about my behavior and promise to be nice in the future. Also, I wrote “i will not be mean to people on creativecow” 100 times on my chalk board.

Sincerely,
Guy that was Mean to the Guy that didn’t read the question.

[Charlie Hughes]

That’s not the question. That’s simply the mask shape, you go try making a bubble float by with just “mask shape” keyframed. With “position” on other layers you can, for instance, have an object move on a curved path. You can bend it’s position keyframes to make a smooth arcing motion. What you just explained does not achieve this with masks. Try it.