Simon Bonner
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I also haven’t used the programme, but perhaps it is “smarter” than Encore in that it can tell what aspect ratio the imported video should be, even though it needs to be scaled down, as Dave said. 1280 x 780 can only be interpreted as widescreen, so the programme must be downgrading to 720 x 480 16:9. Importing 720 x 480 gives the programme a choice between interpreting as standard 4:3 or widescreen 16:9, and it may be getting it wrong. Encore always interprets correctly in my experience, but iDVD could be different. Is there a way of checking how iDVD is interpreting your footage? If so, check it’s giving you the correct pixel aspect ratio for standard def 16:9.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
1) Select the layer you want replaced in the timeline panel.
2) alt+click on the layer you want to replace it with in the project panel.
3) with alt held down, drag the layer on top of the layer in the timeline.Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
I recently recorded a 5 min video tutorial on creating multiple effect animation presets with keyframe animation, and just uploaded it. You can see it here.
I don’t mention it in the vid, but you can also add expressions to presets. Just select the property to which you’ve added the expression before saving the preset.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
Maltaannon’s shape extruder custom effect only works in AE CS3.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
If I have a large prem timeline and I don’t want to bring it all into AE I usually create a new timeline, copy the footage I’m going to play with from the main timeline and paste it in the new timeline, then import just the shorter timeline into AE (when you import, select the timeline’s name from the dropdown).
If you do decide to render from prem first, choose an uncompressed format as AE doesn’t work well with compressed formats and may not even import them. Besides, you can always delete hard drive hogging intermediate renders once you’ve finished your work in AE.
Finally, I believe you can also use dynamic link to get your AE comp back into prem without rendering it, though I’ve not tried this myself.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
There’s none that I know of. If you’re having trouble with your conversion software, perhaps you could import your footage into your NLE of choice and render it from there prior to importing into AE. Premiere, for example, has an option to render as uncompressed avi.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
I just think animations aren’t supposed to be watchable. But if it’s your final render before compression, there’s no need to watch it!
Remember though that DVD won’t support high def footage. You’ll have to downgrade to 720 x 480 (or x 576 for PAL) if you’re planning on Encore (or whatever software you’re using to make DVDs) allowing you to import it.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
If you’re going down the DVD route, you’ll need to use 16:9 non square pixels. DVD doesn’t support footage at 1280×720, even though it’s 16:9. It will only take 720×480 (720×576, PAL). This is important, because if you take the time to render out your footage at 1280×720, you’re going to find that Encore (or whatever software you’re using) won’t take it. I’m using Encore 2.0, which has DVD support but not HD, so perhaps you will be able to import your footage into Encore CS3 if you have it, but you won’t be able to bring it into a conventional DVD project.
As for your photoshop images, you can drop those into a non square comp and they’ll look just fine as AE will “spead the pixels out” so to speak, so they’ll fit. There will be a loss of resolution down to DVD quality, but as the rest of your footage will be at the quality anyway it won’t be a problem. Or you can set your PS images to have 1.42 pixel aspect ratio so they’re ready to bring into a 16:9 non-square pixel comp without AE needing to make any automatic interpretation at all.
As for your converted footage, I’m not familiar with the existing aspect ratios so I’m not sure. But you can’t have different aspect ratios in the same video. You can have 4:3 and 16:9 on the same DVD, but not in the same video. I also wouldn’t play with the interpret footage dialogue box: if footage with non-square pixels is reinterpreted as square pixels, for example, AE will just get confused.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
You should be able to import it, but you’ll have to scale it up to fit to the width of the screen. It’s a shame to have to downgrade your other footage, but if you’re only going to output to SD it’s not too much of a loss.
By the way, in case you don’t know, you can match the scale etc of a number of clips in prem by setting one how you like it, copying it, then selecting the other clips, right clicking, and choosing paste attributes (I think that’s what it’s called).
The quicktime animation from AE works fine on DVD in my experience.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX -
There are a couple of links to related threads beneath this thread, which shows that searching for related topics is always a good idea. I would add that you may be better off starting out making presets, which can achieve quite complicated effects if needs be. It’s much easier than getting into the mechanics of plugins.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysFX