[Steve Roberts]

Yes yes yes. Unless you really know what you’re doing, you should interpret footage as “what it is”. If it’s square pixel footage, interpret it that way, or let AE do it.

When you drop something into a comp, AE automtaically adjusts it to fit the new PAR, so don’t go back and misinterpret it.

[Steve Roberts]

[Mike Smith] “As a caution, you may want to sort out early and run technical tests on your AE to film workflow – get to the lab or facility which will handle this and get their input in just how to set up your AE frames for best results on film.”

Good advice. If you go to the lab that will do the final transfer, they should do a few tests for free.

[Steve Roberts]

Dick Smith posted this link recently — hope it helps.

https://zaxwerks.com/layertools/index.shtml

[Steve Roberts]

Just confirming. Have you tried this?

– import HD footage into AE
– interpret as 1280×720, square pixels (if AE didn’t do it automatically)
– create DV (0.9) comp
– drag footage into comp
– fit-to-width (cmd-opt-shift-H) for letterbox, or
– fit-to-height (cmd-opt-shift-G?) for pan/scan

If it still looks bad … how does native DV footage look like in the same comp, same pipeline out?
Have you tried making your own 1280×720 graphic and putting it through the same workflow?

[Steve Roberts]

The comp length doesn’t change when time remapping — but you can change the *layer* length by dragging the in/out points of the layer after you time remap. You have to do this so you can see the rest of the layer.

The only way to change a comp’s length is by using the Composition Settings dialog. The tutorial author might have been using a longer comp all along, but was just zoomed into it so it *appeared* shorter.

[Steve Roberts]

You should place the trackers on points in the footage that you want to remain static in the frame, depending on whether you want to track position, or position & rotation. Once you track, then apply, those points will remain static, and the edges of the frame will bounce around.

Have you read the manual on this?

[Steve Roberts]

Keep in mind that the high-quality (Animation codec) movie you made in AE needs to be compressed to the MPEG-2 codec before it can be burned as a DVD in DVD Studio Pro, for example.

I like to use Compressor (comes with FC Studio) to compress using one of the two-pass VBR presets, then I import the resulting files into DVDsp.

Some DVD Authoring apps do this compression as part of the authoring process, but I prefer to do it separately. Of course, you should get more info from the DVD COW as Darby suggested.

To recap: AE high-quality movie -> MPEG-2 compressed movie -> authored DVD.

[Steve Roberts]

Did you set the tracker to stabilize motion?

[Steve Roberts]

Sorry, not directly — that’s more of an NLE/audio editor thing. AE is showing its roots as a compositor. Usually the audio mix is done outside of AE.

But of I had to do it in AE, I’d apply the stereo mixer effect, panning, then render (or Export) each channel as a separate file.

Anybody else?

[Steve Roberts]

Did you render straight or premultiplied?
What are you using to view the movie?
How does it look when imported into the editing (?) app, not QT Player?