Re: Pixel aspect ratio in Adobe Media Encoder

No, letterboxing or not is not what I mean. Let me try to expound:

What I do is I create demo movies of our company software. These can then be shown to prospective customers by sales staff on either computer monitors or TV monitors. Since computer monitors have square pixels and TVs have 4:3 ratio pixels, I have to render two different versions of each movie - one for computers and one for TVs (to make a circle look like a circle on both types of monitor).

This works just fine if I do it in AE - changing the pixel aspect ratio changes the aspect ratio of the content, just as it is meant to. So in AE I have created two compositions with the same content - one for square pixels (which the source material also is in), and one for 4:3 pixels (which looks squeezed together on the computer, but then gets displayed correctly on a TV).

BUT, if I render the AE compositions in Adobe Media Encoder (which I must to make the WMVs viewable on a Mac), the square pixel comp renders without a problem, but when I import the 4:3 pixel comp into Adobe Media Encoder, the content does not get squeezed together as it should. Instead, Media Encoder only changes the proportions of the picture frame itself, and then proportionally fits the content into that picture frame.

I.e. instead of a squeezed 4:3 pixel ratio movie, I get a proportionally shrunk square pixel movie running in a frame with black borders.

Media Encoder seems not to pick up the pixel aspect ratio setting from AE, but instead uses the original source directly. And then playing around with the pixel aspect ratio setting in Media Encoder has no effect on the content, only the picture frame.

So my question is - How do I get Adobe Media Encoder to produce a squeezed 4:3 pixel aspect ratio movie which will look good on a TV monitor?

(BTW, I can't find the "small button" you are talking of.)

Knut Högvall
Documentation Manager
Polystar OSIX