Re: I just need to know if I'm doing this right or wrong

QuickTime Player usually does not display things as they would appear on their native display device (a widescreen PAL device in your case). Instead it displays them in square pixels... To test and make sure that your footage is correct I recommend bringing it back into AE, interpreting it as widescreen footage and putting it in a widescreen PAL composition with pixel aspect correction on.

[mike kov] "Also if anybody is feeling generous could they please explain the difference to me between square pixels and non square. "

Square pixels are square, where as non-square pixels are... not square =)

As a general rule I never use a square pixel comp for anything that is going to a non-square pixel device. Square pixel compositions use pixel resolutions that are not supported by the target non-square pixel format. For example, a Square Pixel PAL D1/DV comp is 768x576, but that is not the resolution expected by PAL devices. So in order to get it to work properly it needs to be squashed down to 720x576... which will look the same* as something done in a regular non-square pixel PAL 720x576 comp from AE, it just adds another unnecessary step. There may be times when using a square pixel composition would make sense, however.

*since the 768x576 render has more pixels, and you're scaling it down horizontally you will end up with some horizontal resampling, which is not necessarily good or bad... but I still remain wary of square pixel comps.

Darby Edelen
Lead Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA