[Mike Susol]

Great tips. I’ve learned the hard way about the compression issue AND the gamma issue with h.264. I always render a high-quality image sequence from AE and use Compressor to… well… compress. It took some trial and error to find the best gamma adjustment but well worth the effort.

Thanks again for sharing some secrets of the sauce (and for the helpful Dave LaRonde tips).

Best.

[Mike Susol]

Thanks for all of the timely responses guys. Very, very helpful. If I’m hearing you correctly, you recommend building 1920×1080 just in case the client comes back and requests an “HD” version. No way to “size it up” so to speak.

Looks like I’ll be diving in to my first 1920×1080 production.

Best,
-Mike

[Mike Susol]

Thanks for the info Michael. I will be getting video assets sized at 1280×720 so I have three questions:

1. Why do you recommend working 720×480 vs. 1280×720?
2. Should I just size all of my assets to be 1280×720 (Illustrator, C4D renders, Photoshop etc.)
2. If I build at 1280×720 and compress using h.264 will my client have any issues playing an 8 minute loop from a laptop with a decent video card.

Thanks,
-Mike

[Mike Susol]

I can make that recommendation to my client. I’m assuming they will have a PC laptop but I’d prefer to recommend the most stable platform and avoid any issues if they have an old computer with a poor video card. Another member suggests that I build 1920 x 1080 and then downsize. I’m assuming this would give me the most flexibility in terms of BLU-RAY, STANDARD DEF DVD or playback from a computer hard drive. Will 1920 x 1080 be a lot slower to work with in AE vs. 720 x 480 (I’m using a Mac 2×3 Quad-Core Intel w. 12 GB RAM). Should I avoid 1280 x 720 altogether? Thanks.