[Tim Kurkoski]

AE is a highly complex program with limitless creative possibilities. Forums like this are good at answering specific questions, but your question is perhaps a bit too general.

I’d recommend you start learning how to use AE. There are many options- tutorials on the web (such as the ones here at CreativeCow/CreativeCalf), training videos, and books. Regarding videos and books, I’d recommend the Total Training videos and the Creating Motion Graphics books by Chris and Trish Meyer. They’re not the only series out there, and not the cheapest, but in my opinion they’re the best. But my opinion is also that there’s no such thing as a bad book or video as long as the information is factually correct, so whatever you can get your hands on is a good thing.

[Tim Kurkoski]

QuickTime does not have a good selection of codecs for AVI. For that matter, Windows doesn’t come with very good AVI codecs either.

QuickTime is a much better choice, as Apple includes a wide selection of codecs. You do need to install QT on your Windows PC, but you should have it installed there anyway. 😉

[Tim Kurkoski]

File size is not necessarily relevant to quality. The clip that you captured and the clip that you exported for DVD use different compression schemes, and they’re not directly comparable.

You can change what MPEG preset you use for DVD export, or you can edit the preset and define one with your own custom setting.

Also remember that DV sources are not typically broadcast quality. From better quality cameras (Canon XL series, for exampel, you can potentially get a reasonable facsimile, but DV uses far more compression than the formats used in the broadcast industry. In other words, make sure you’ve set your expectations accordingly.

[Tim Kurkoski]

I haven’t used it, but I looked into it a while back. My impression is that eDVD will disassemble the DVD menu structure and allow you to change how the buttons work, then it writes the data back to DVD file structure.

For your case, what you would do is create a button a menu using Encore that doesn’t have a link. Write the project to a folder on the hard drive, ignoring Encore’s warnings about the button not doing anything. Use eDVD to open the DVD files, set the link on the button, and save.

There’s an eDVD forum on the Cow, too, that you might want to post on if you haven’t already.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Can you explain better what you mean by “lines”, or possibly post a screenshot somewhere?

One of the more likely things that you could be seeing is field interlacing, which is normal. If you’re going to be watching this video on a TV screen, don’t worry about it. If you’re going to be watching on a computer, go into the export settings and change the field options to None or Deinterlace (I forget what it says exactly, but they mean the same thing).

[Tim Kurkoski]

Yes to all. Some of the menu elements or window names might be slightly different (especially in Elements 2), but by and large it’s the same layout.

[Tim Kurkoski]

You can create an Action that will resize your images automatically. You can then batch process the images using that action.

The problem with squishing is that your images are not the correct ratio for 720×480. To avoid squishing, you can do one of a few things:

1. Crop your images to the correct ratio. The crop tool can be set to crop at a specific size.
2. Resize the images so they are slightly larger than necessary. Premiere Pro won’t care if they’re just a bit too large, it’ll just crop off the sides. Try 761×480.
3. Resize the images so they’re a bit smaller. This will fit everything in the frame in Premiere Pro, but you’ll get black bars to fill out the extra space. Try 720×454.

In the case of 2 and 3, if you simply leave the Constrain Porportions checkbox on in Photoshop’s Image Size dialog, all you have to do is type in one number, and Photoshop will calculate the other.

[Tim Kurkoski]

It’s there, you’re just not looking in quite the right spot.

At the top of the Image Size dialog, you can enter pixel values in the Pixel Dimensions box. Note that the Resample Image checkbox at the bottom needs to be on for that to work.

(The Document Size only represents the size the image will print at, and is therefore only a relative number.)

[Tim Kurkoski]

Are you using Windows or Mac?

I’m not sure of the method on Mac, but here’s what I do on Win:

1. Choose Start > Run.
2. Type “charmap” (sans quotes) and click OK.
3. Choose your Font.
4. Find the character you want, double-click it, then hit the copy button.
5. Go to Photoshop, grab the text tool and create a new text layer, set the font, and paste.

Also notice at the bottom of the charmap window, it lists the keystroke to type that character directly. For example, the copyright symbol is Alt+0169 (hold down Alt and type the number on the keypad), at least for the Minion font I have selected.

[Tim Kurkoski]

Effects pretty much as a category will not export to SWF, as there’s no equivalent for them in Flash (my memory is shaky- there may be a few effects like some blurs, but by and large effects don’t translate).

There is a workaround, but it makes your SWF files much larger. In the SWF export dialog, there is an option to Rasterize Unsupported Features, and that will cause AE to render the layers with effects into rasterized JPEG images.