[Mike Sussman]

Thank you. It sounds like I’ve been on the right track but unfortunately those are the settings I had already tweaked that resulted in the screen grab shown above. 🙁

I am indeed exporting this as a stand alone movie before importing into AE for final usage. Both Zax project and AE comp are set to NTSC DV 720×480 0.9par. I’ve tried up to 5×5 antialiasing but I haven’t tried those antiflicker settings because mine wasn’t flickering. I also did try adjusting the object facet setting for the best/final. The default was at 1 and I tried 0.5. Like you said, I could go as low as 0.1, but the problem seemed to me to be connected to horizontal scan lines and not the number of polygon segments, as the circle does seem like a near perfect circle to me (even if a jaggedy circle).

I can still try 0.1 on final facet and 5×5 +AA but I’m also wondering if I could possibly avoid the problem of a poor alpha channel rendering if I just avoided rendering an alpha channel all together. I may (overnight) try applying my Zax project directly to an AE layer and then render entirely within After Effects. Otherwise, I’m still looking for any other suggestions if I’m missing something.

Thanks.

[Mike Sussman]

I didn’t see any preset set, and it specifically said None for the preset, but when I clicked on Reset the values did turn blue again. I guess, even though it said none for preset it was really there somehow. Odd. Thanks.

[Mike Sussman]

We’re using Avid XPress Pro, version 5.8.1

[Mike Sussman]

Yes, I did try that, but the problem doesn’t seem to involve horizontal scan lines.

[Mike Sussman]

(bump)

[Mike Sussman]

Thank you for your help.

When you render from AE, are you rendering 720×480? If so, what codec?

My AE comps (CS3 if I haven’t mentioned the version yet) have always been the preset “NTSC DV”, which gives you the settings of “D1/DV NTSC (0.9) with a width of 720 and a height of 480. When I render most of my settings are to use the same settings as the comp. The codec I use for Quicktime is Animation.

When you import into Avid, are you selecting Non-Square/Maintain as the import option? Avid is 720×486, even when you work with DV. If you import 601 you’re stretching your graphic 6 pixels, and that may cause the crunch. Otherwise, change your Comp settings in AE to 720×486, rerender, then reimport into Avid using 601 size.

I’ve never heard of DV being 720×486 in Avid before. My Avid import settings have always been an Aspect Ratio, Pixel Aspect of 601/709 non-square. But I did just test out two of your suggestions here. I re-rendered my comp at 720×486 and imported under 601 as before. I also tried re-importing my original 720×480 under the (non-601) “Maintain, non-square”. Unfortunately both ways resulted with the same edge issues.

Now speaking of AE settings, I just now noticed that the default NTSC DV setting says 27:20, while the NTSC D1 setting (720×486) shows the more familiar 4:3 ratio. Not to get off track but I found that surprising. Anyway, another export setting I have under “Video Output > Color:” is “Premultiplied (Matted)” and not the other choice of “Straight (Unmatted)”. I don’t know much about those two choices. I haven’t changed these settings for a long time and this problem is more recent, but do you think that may be a factor?

Is you timeline in Green/Green mode?

Do you mean that quality setting in Avid that can sometimes be half yellow / half green? If so, then yes it’s all green.

Are you rendering to fields from AE then properly interpreting the fields in Avid upon import? If you’re not rendering to fields from AE, are you selecting “None” for the field options upon import into Avid?

This part I don’t know. I don’t see any options for rendering to fields. Maybe I am already but where would I look for that setting. As for Avid, I’m importing “Non-interlaced” as the field order, but I did just run another test under “lower field first” with no improvement.

Have you hit Play in Avid to see if the stair stepping goes away? When you stop playback in Avid you’re only seeing 1 field, so that may also account for the stairstepping. I’ve often been disgusted by the graphics I import into Avid only to love them again when I hit play and watch them on my broadcast monitor.

I know exactly what you mean about video sometimes looking much better when playing, but that is not the case here. It actually looks much worse, as (for some reason) Avid can’t decide whether these straight lines (like on the left inside of the C) should be either red or very very dark, so it appears to flicker back and forth between red and very very dark as it slowly zooms larger. It looks bad on an NTSC monitor and just horrible on the Avid monitor.

I suppose seeing the motion would help a ton. Here is a link to a 2 second Quicktime file exported from the Avid (not the original straight from AE). This test has a lighter background to make it easier to see. It’s especially obvious on the inside curves of the C and the M. Also notice that against this lighter background it’s much easier to see that there actually is a sharp edge around the letters but it’s very dark, and its the color that borders that edge that’s actually “stairstepping” inward away from the edge, creating those dark spaces. Hard to describe in words but you see what I mean, right?

[Mike Sussman]

*bump?*

[Mike Sussman]

That worked great. Thanks.

[Mike Sussman]

Re: #3

In Avid near the bottom of the export settings dialog there’s a setting for “Display Aspect Ratio” (separate from the actual dimensions above it). There’s not much explaining this in detail in the help files.