Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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dave’s right (again), 720×480 is the dvd farme size not the d1 preset i mention (720×486).
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
well the resizing is easy since your maintaining the 16:9 ratio, create a widescreen pal comp, drag you footage in and then layer>transform>fit to comp and that’s good to go.
so i guess the question is if you want to conform the frame rate by slowing the original footage (and preserving every frame) or forcing the 30p to play at 25p (losing some frames, but preserving speed). this may be a per clip decision.
if you want to preserve every frame, just chose file>interpret footage>main and change the frame rate to 25… simple.
if you want to maintain the speed, you might check out andrew’s framerate converter tutorial. he has a preset you can download, or you can download a simplified version of his preset that at http://www.mercuryjones.com/aepresets.html.
for rendering, i would set to render using the lossless animation codec, rendering straight with alpha if any of the footage is keyed.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
or apply timewarp as an adjustment layer in the on comp, then use the mask as you were in the other comp.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
keylight is essentially all of those, it should be on the ae install disk as a third party effect.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
your audio issues may be due to an audio rate mismatch. the rendered audio rate needs to match the original audio rate. this audio was part of the movie, correct? it isn’t an added mp3 (ae doesn’t seem to work well with mp3s).
your file size will get very large if you render to a lossless (default) or uncompressed format. your final destination for the file will help decide what other codec you might want to choose. generally you waould like to render out losslessly, then compress as the final step, but that can be adjusted if you know what codec you will need int the end.
the render time seems long for just two overlayed images, so i think something else may be going on.
the frame size seems a bit odd 1280×720 would be a normal hd size. have you checked the frame size in ae… select the footage in the project window and next to the thumbnail at the top it should give your the size, duration and frame rate. again knowing your destination would help decide if you needed to make the file conform to normal hd.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
your workflow would be to set ae to interpret footage leaving the frame rate alone (unless you know it is incorrect), then set to separate fields appropriately (upper/lower) and then to remove the pulldown. guess should work, if it doesn’t check the footage for edits, if there are edits you’ll have more work. if guess doesn’t work check the first five frames of you clip and note the cadence of progressive frames (‘w’) and interlaced frames (‘s’) and manually set the cadence from the remove pulldown dropdown menu.
now drag the footage in to the make comp button (this will create a comp that is the same size and frame rate (should be 23.976 or 23.98 now). you won’t need to worry about frame rate until you render.
when you render you will want to put the pulldown back in. click the open the render settings and set to add fields (specify the same dominace that the orig footage had) and select the pulldown cadence (it shouldn’t matter which, but if you wanted you could add the same cadence the footage originally had). you might also look at the frame rate, it should have changed to 29.97 after adding the pulldown. now you’ll render your 24p back to 30i.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if you plan to convert to dvd then you should use the d1 (ntsc for u.s., pal for most others)comp preset in ae. this should give you a comp that is 720×486, 29.97 frames/sec, and a pixel aspect ratio of 0.9.
you’ll have a choice when you render to either keep it progressive (default) or click render settings and set it to render in fields (lower usually for ntsc). you would prefer to render to the lossless codec (even though you may not be able to play the final render off your hard drive) and then take that file to your dvd software to convert to mpeg-2 and make a dvd. you can render to mpeg-2 from ae, but i don’t think ae makes great mpegs and the dvd software will probably do a better job.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
if you rendered as lossless or uncompressed (or possibly another high data rate codec) you have probably rendered a file that is too big to play from your hard drive. other factors that would affect the data rate would be frame size (like hd) and frame rate (60p).
try taking your render back into ae, drag it to the make comp icon (little film strip button at the bottom of the project window) and then rendering that out to something like photojpeg. or if you have an nle drag the file in there using a dv preset for the project. if you have another compression tool, like sorenson squeeze, you could drag it in there and let it kick out a lower data rate file like mpeg (ae does a crappy mpeg, so i wouldn’t use it for mpegs).
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
you may end up rendering to an intermediate codec, maybe dvcprohd, to go between fcp and ae…
but, have you tried to leave (or match) the interpret footage in ae to the settings that you have in fcp (a 1.33 pixel aspect as you decribed)? you can leave the field and frame rate alone at this point. then drag the footage onto the make comp icon, but then set the comps size to 1920×1080 and pixel aspect to square.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
ok, the codec shouldn’t be the problem…
how are you viewing the file in ae? are you draggin it into the project window, then dragging it onto the make comp icon (filmstrip looking button in the project window) to create a new comp, and then hitting the zero on the #keypad to preview?
if that’s your method and you are seeing white, then you may want to try a few things. quit ae. remove the ae prefs file from user home/library/preferences/adobe/after effects/version/. remove third party quicktime components from both the library/quictime and user name/quicktime folders (not the system/library/quicktime folder). you may even want to remove third party plugins from your ae plugins folder. when you open ae again, goto prefernces>previews and disable opengl. then try bringing in your file as described above.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW