[Jaeson Jrakman]

And I’m still not getting a very hard edge on the “stroke”

[Jaeson Jrakman]

Thanks again for your response!

Oops, that’s my fault. I had the Vegas effect on an asset inside of that composition. I’ve taken off of that, and replaced the stroke effect on that composition with the Vegas effect and here’s the result:

It seems to be working to some extent, but it doesn’t seem to want to go around the arrows, where the gradient starts to change to red from yellow.

I’ve tried different blend modes with much the same result.

[Jaeson Jrakman]

Thank you very much for your response.

I’m having a bit of trouble following you though.

As I mentioned above, I did use a track matte to create this shape.

I have it precomposed and inserted into another composition. I’ve applied the Vegas effect, but it doesn’t quite work.

It just puts some white areas into the arrows rather than create a stroke around the shape, and I’ve attached a screencap to show what it’s doing.

[Jaeson Jrakman]

Nope, this is a desktop computer, not a laptop, and probably a few years old now.

Currently I’m using a One Book for my dedicated footage drive, Drive L.

I’m a bit fuzzy on the square vs. rectangular pixels matter I’m afraid.

[Jaeson Jrakman]

No sweat about getting cranky. We’re all human. Happens to all of us.

Anyway, just saw this, and the “aspect ratio” thing I was talking about earlier worked out, even though I used the wrong terminology. I’m happy to be corrected though.

For some reason, Encore just did not like that goofy 854 dimension. This time, it didn’t automatically render at 4:3, and kept the 16:9.

I’m glad that you posted the instructions for Premiere though. I do need to practice more in Premiere than I do, so I will be referring back to this thread in the future, and use that. Thanks for posting it.

I didn’t notice much of a difference in build time with the Avid DNxHD codec in a Quicktime though.

I’m a bit of a slow study I’m afraid, but overall this has been a very helpful and information packed thread. Some of the information you laid out is a bit over my head at the moment, but I’ll absorb it over time as I come back to this thread to reference it any time I burn a DVD. Lots of good stuff here.

One question though for future reference, is your preference for the Avid DNxHD codec in a Quicktime, or for the MPEG2-DVD with the separate .wav and .m2v files? And why?

[Jaeson Jrakman]

Okay, so after doing some additional reading, I think I might know what the problem is here, and it boils down to aspect ratio.

The original footage I had was 854 x 480. Like you said, this is a weird aspect ratio. I downloaded the footage from YouTube, so I think what happened here was the guy who uploaded the footage, reduced the size of the widescreen file by giving it this weird aspect ratio.

When I import this footage into Encore, it initially reads the 854 x 480 as 16:9, but then when I hit the build button it says, oh wait a minute, this is really 4:3, because 720×480 is close to that size, and is 4:3.

So I think I need to render footage at a 16:9 dimension that Encore will read as 16:9 during the build. The lowest 16:9 aspect ratio I know of, that Encore might easily recognize, is 720p. But I could also try 1024×576 or 1152×648 too. I might even be able to go down to 896 x 504. Here’s a list of true 16:9 resolutions:

https://pacoup.com/2011/06/12/list-of-true-169-resolutions/

[Jaeson Jrakman]

The MPEG2-DVD is rendering much faster. I’m getting a 2 hour render time.

[Jaeson Jrakman]

So I have my QuickTime, adjusted to a 720×480 aspect ratio. I import it into Encore as a timeline. Encore automatically detects the footage with a 4:3 aspect ratio rather than a 16:9 aspect ratio.

I’ll try exporting out of After Effects as an MPEG2-DVD and see if I can get a different result.

[Jaeson Jrakman]

Mainly just personal preference. I find the workflow in AE much better than premiere. lol I find Premiere to be overly complicated in export in the same way. ☺ It probably boils down to the fact that I work much more often in AE than Premiere.

So, now I have a choice to either render out an MPEG2-DVD or a QuickTime DNxHD out of AE. When I choose the Avid DNxND Coden, there’s a quality setting. I’m going to choose 100%

I’ve changed the aspect ratio from 854 to 720.

Here’s my computer stats:

3.20 gigahertz Intel Core i5-4460
256 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache
6144 kilobyte tertiary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (4 total)
Not hyper-threaded

Board: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. H81M-H
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
UEFI: American Megatrends Inc. F2 08/10/2015

16286 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Slot ‘ChannelA-DIMM0’ has 8192 MB (serial number 9D3C8884)
Slot ‘ChannelA-DIMM1’ is Empty
Slot ‘ChannelB-DIMM0’ has 8192 MB (serial number 870A1119)
Slot ‘ChannelB-DIMM1’ is Empty

[Jaeson Jrakman]

A) Don’t have the info off hand, but I can post it later when I get home
B) I am working with an .mp4, using After Effects to turn it into a DNxHD. I suppose I could probably just use media encoder?
C) no effects. Just a single straight .mp4 file.

Maybe I’ll change the aspect ratio to 720 from 854 and re-render it tonight.

Should I keep the quality setting of the DNxHD QT codec in After Effects at 100% or lower it some when I render?