Sam Moulton
Forum Replies Created
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watch out for the fit command and make sure that your x and y scale values are equal. I always use the fir horizontal command instead.
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AE always shows square pixels unless you enable pixel aspect correction in the comp window. Enable it and you won’t be squished any more.
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864 X 540 is a weird picture ratio. Doesn’t make 4:3, doesn’t make 16:9
It does make 8:5 which is a long way from 4:3. You’ll end up with 72 pixel wide bars on either side of the comp if you keep full height because 720 X 540 is 4:3
If you don’t want the black bars you need to fit to width which crops off the top and bottom. You can either do this in a 720 X 540 comp or by dragging your SQ pixel Flash QT into a D1 comp and fitting horizontally. Make sure the X and Y scale values are the same and you are good to go for render
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I have a print guy friend that uses AE all the time for his arty stuff because things like trapcode’s shine and 3D stroke just don’t work in photoshop. He just builds really big comps. Posters are hardly ever 300 ppi. They are usually between 150 and 200 pixels per inch, trade show background panels, those big 8 footers, are somewhere between 72 and 150 ppi, and those big vinyl decals they put on semi trucks and billboards are usually between 20 and 50 ppi. AE can easily handle those sizes if you just measure your output, make reasonable expectations and assumptions about viewing distance, and go from there.
Think about it, HD looks very good when projected on a 60 foot screen in the theaters here for the first look previews they show before the previews. Let’s see 60 feet is 720 inches, hd is 1920 pixels so in effect you’ve got a whopping 2.6 pixels per inch. Double that to about 5 pixels per inch and you’re good to go for a great looking billboard….
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if you scale or move any interlaced footage it is always best to separate fields. If you don’t, and say you move the footage up 3 pixels, you’ve just reversed the field order and things will look horrible….
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go to interpret footage, more options, check anti alias settings. Make sure they are set to better not faster.
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Most QT codecs don’t embed the par info so they only display square pixels. If you want to render for the web or other devices I’d suggest dropping your widescreen comp in an appropriately sized square pixel comp for rendering. If you’re going to put this in a NLE to to complete or send to tape or DVD then use the the default sizes. Your QT preview will not look right unless you’ve got QT pro and save the file with the appropriate display size, but DVD’s and your NLE will handle the files just fine if you make sure that they are interpreted properly.
As for the audio, if rendering to DV set the sample rate to 48.
What kind of audio is in the original file? If it’s an mp3 convert it before you bring it into AE.
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for aspect ratios and comps please just always use the presets. Your numbers appear to be correct, but if it says custom in the comp settings then something’s probably wrong.
for your sound question, what are your render settings? what codec are you using, what are your sound settings?
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don’t feel bad. I know folks that have been in TV for 20 years that don’t get the difference between DF and NDF time code. Just remember that DF always counts hours minutes and seconds accurately but doesn’t always count frames sequentially. NDF time code, after only a minute of running time, does not display the correct hours minutes and seconds but it does always display frames sequentially.