[Steve Roberts]

By the way, “rendering” and “exporting” are very specific terms in AE. Lest LaDave get on your hiney, you might want to use the right term. Rendering is invoked by “Make Movie” or “Add to Render Queue”. Exporting comes from the File>Export menu.

Anyway, your comp should be set to the DV widescreen preset. When you render it, it will be 720×480, but squished.

This is fine if you are going to DVD — tell the DVD Authoring app that the source is 16×9 and it will look normal.

Does that help?

[Steve Roberts]

Have you tried the Match Grain effect in AE?

[Steve Roberts]

It’s a certainty that those files get compressed to something else before going to air. Talk to whoever does that compression at the receiving end. Editor, maybe? They might be fine with your giving them something compressed to the Avid codec or similar.

Anybody else?

[Steve Roberts]

If you drag a bunch of images (of any type) into a composition, AE will place each one on a layer. To make each one last one frame, select them all, place the current-time indicator at frame 0, then press alt+]. They are now all one frame long, and you can use animation>sequence layers to sequence them.

If they were all named sequentially in the first place, you could just import them as a numbered sequence, which AE sees as a movie clip (pretty much).
But if you just want to play them sequentially and work with audio, a Non-Linear Editing app would be a better choice, as George wrote.

[Steve Roberts]

Try the loop expression using “continue” or “offset” instead of the default. Keep the other settings at default for now.

[Steve Roberts]

I’d import the drawings, and place them in a comp. Then I’d drag that comp into another one, and animate that comp’s position and scale to pan and zoom.

Or you could make that comp “3D”, add a camera, then animate the camera. I’d go that route. You must add a camera if you go 3D.

You can import the audio as well — make sure they are AIFFs or WAVs, not MP3s.

Kdeep in mind that you have to wait a little bit for previews – AE has to render everything, unlike an editing app.

[Steve Roberts]

If you have all the drawings (not just the keys) shoot them (with tripod, or scan them) with a digital camera (or scanner) that names the shots sequentially (IMG0001.jpg, etc.). Then drag those shots onto your hard drive, then import into AE by selecting the first image, then checking “JPEG (or TIFF or whatever) sequence”. The shots will come in as a 30fps sequence, like a movie. If you want, you can change the frame rate using file>interpret footage>main.

[Steve Roberts]

Why choose 720×480 square pix in the first place?

I ask this because, if you want to go to DVD, and MAX only renders square pixels, you should have made the MAX camera 720×540 for 4:3, or 864×486 for 16:9. 720×480 square pix is between those two: neither fish nor fowl.

So. Why choose 720×480 square pix (in MAX) in the first place?

[Steve Roberts]

If you don’t want to see those, you need to remove pulldown and separate fields in the HD footage before scaling.

[Steve Roberts]

Do you have pixel aspect ratio correction switched on in your comp window? That might mess it up.

Alternately, you could precomp then apply Simple Choker …?