[John Cuevas]

720×486 is/was a broadcast standard for many years, but it doesn’t use square pixels, it uses .91 or 1.21 sized pixels, depending if you are delivering 16×9 or 4×3. If they are asking for center cut, it sounds like they are expecting 1.21 pixels(Widescreen).

But here’s the thing, and I’ve made this mistake in the past at quite a cost. Get confirmation from the studio what they are expecting for Pixel Aspect Ratio. Then you can just press “cntl + K” and choose one of the NTSC D1 presets and you’re done.

Because your computer is square pixels, things will looked squished or stretch using non-square pixels. Under your comp window is a pixel aspect ratio toggle that will ‘correct’ for using non-square on a computer, but when you do this shapes/text will look all jaggedy, don’t worry about that, it will look fine when it plays on the air.

Oh…and again GET CONFIRMATION…trust me, it can be a very very costly mistake.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

You can select paths in illustrator, open AE, create a solid and paste. Then you can use the paths option in plexus.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Just to offer a solution, I would “offline” the .tif files by moving them from their current location. Collect everything else, then throw the .tif files into the newly created footage folder. When you open the new project, you might have to find the .tif folders, but if they are in the same folder with everything else, good chance AE will automatically find them .

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Check out this thread: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1052053#1052273

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

You can try using Color Finesse and secondary color correction. I did a 3 different secondary selections and was able to pull a decent amount of red out. First 2 tabs were the left ear, 1 try on the right. Selections really needed a tight range, you get into bricks pretty quickly.

7665_secondarycolorcorrection.aep.zip

Andrew Devis did a tutorial on it. Secondary Color Correction in After Effects

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Most of the time, I use a Luma Key effect, set it to Key Out Brighter and set the threshold to 254.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Another method would be to use the Mosiac effect

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Change your quality setting to half or quarter and render out with “current settings”. You could also lower the layer quality switch to add more aliasing

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

I would try using a particle generator, like Trapcode Particular

If you have particular, here are some free presets people have made that might help give you a good starting point.

3D Particular Line

Particular Bleed

Ink Bleed

Particular Blood ADAPTATION

Also checkout tutorials 25/30 at VideoCoPilot

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Probably the best method, would be to make an uncompressed .avi or .mov. Then bring that uncompressed file into Media Encoder and find the Youtube preset that matches your current spec(1080/24p, use the Format h.264 Preset Youtube 1080 24p) . Doing it this way you can make multiple files and have a rendered uncompressed master.

Otherwise, I would open Media Encoder, import the AE comp and render straight from that to the youtube preset of choice. If you have to make multiple files(trying different presets) this method would be slower, but if only doing one, it might be faster.

Me, I always make an Master file of everything so I would choose option 1.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.