[Mr_steven]

Thanks Mike, lowering the master level, and turning up the dialogue level seems to have helped.

[Mr_steven]

Hi Seamus.

I may be able to help you out, send me your email adress and I’ll pm you. http://www.stevenwheeler@blueyonder.co.uk

Steve.

[Mr_steven]

Thanks,

I seem to have fixed it with hard light settings.

Cheers.

[Mr_steven]

I had the same problem, I fixed it by changing the soft light setting to hard light setting.

[Mr_steven]

I agree it always look cheap and nasty when it’s done CGI.

I’ve noticed in the new Star Wars prequels they have stuck with contacts for the Sith.

I’m not sure what look I’m after, I want to experiment. It’s for a sci fi project and I want the character to have sinister pink/reddish eyes. I’ve been looking at UV contacts, and under UV lighting they give off a nice glow so I think I will experiment optically rather than use C.G.I. and see what results I can come up with. I could still add to it in After Effects.

Cheers for the advice.

[Mr_steven]

Hi Steve,

I still can’t get this to look right when rendering WMV.

I’ve set up the project at 600×255 and I’m inporting the 720×576 PAL avi and scaling it down. It’s fitting in the window just how I want it, but when exporting to wmv, trying various settings and setting the ratio measurents to 600×255 I’m still getting a squashed image.

When your exporting to .wmv, which wmv setting are you using, before typing in your ratio size ? ie streaming/PAL/NTSC etc… ?

Cheers,

Steve.

[Mr_steven]

I should just mention that the 4:3 rendered showreel consists of 2:35:1 shots with the black bars, so when I import this into premiere with the new 2:35:1 project settings, when I say it fits perfectly, what I mean is I am just getting the image in the frames and not the black bars.

Cheers.

Steve.

[Mr_steven]

Thanks Steve,

I’ve just spent the last hour experimenting. I set up a project to my own 2:35:1 aspect ratio dimensions, and imported the 4:3 rendered showreel into the project….fits perfectly.

I did a quick test render as .wmv and it didn’t quite work. When I typed in the ratio settings (when exporting) to match the project settings, what I got when rendered was a squashed image top and bottom, giving me the black bars I don’t want. I then tried a standard .wmv setting, which looked more like 4:3.

I tried this in quicktime, adjusting the export settings to match the project settings and it worked perfectly as a rendered .mov file.

Why is it distorting the image with .wmv and not .mov (quicktime ?).

I want to use .wmv rather than quicktime as the latter uses up more memory.

Thanks Steve.

Steve.

[Mr_steven]

Thanks for that Steve, I didn’t know about the custom settings when setting up your project. I’ll try this out tomorrow (it’s nearly 3.00am in the UK).

Another question though regarding aspect ratios. For the final edit, when viewed on a DVD player, am I losing quality when rendering at 4:3 as opposed to 16:9. I understand that most DVD players automatically adjust this according to the TV. I usually render in 4:3 incase the viewers only have 4:3 TV’s. If rendered at 16:9 and played back on a 4:3 TV, will the image be stretched or will I get black bars (which I prefer).

Thanks again I appreciate this, and I’ll let you know how I get on.

Cheers.

[Mr_steven]

Looks good Steve, I’m still struggling with this though.

How did you set your project with those dimensions ? and how did you render out to those dimensions ?

Whenever I use the ‘scale clips to project dimensions when adding to sequence’ option it works fine when importing the 2:35:1 shots rendered in 3D Studio, but when I import the 4:3 rendered showreel it still has a lot of space all round, the top bottom and sides. When I use the interpret footage options it just stretches and doesn’t re-size.

I really want to just import the 4:3 footage and get it to fit the 16:9 ratio without losing any image quality.