I need some advice on aspect ratios and re-compositing

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I need some advice on aspect ratios and re-compositing
by Stephen Evans on Jul 24, 2012 at 1:06:46 am

Hi, I've created an animation in flash and composited it in After Effects at a resolution of 720x540 (I wish I hadn't). I need to re-composite it for it to screen at a festival. The festival's site says the minimum resolution should be 1280x720. Obviously this is not only bigger but a wider aspect ratio and no longer 4:3. I think it'd be acceptable if I met their height requirements and retained my 4:3 proportions and didn't bother expanding the width. What should be new resolution be? I worked it out to 967x720, is that a standard resolution or am i off a few pixels?
Second part of my question: after i figure out my new resolution can anyone offer any strategies for scaling my flash files to fit what i need exactly when i got to export new png sequences? Most of my flash files are of varying dimensions because i needed to expand some scenes to take into account camera moves and zooms etc. Should I figure out what percentage i need to increase my flash files by and then export? Has anyone ever done this before and if so, I'd like to know what kinds of things tripped you up before you embarked on this crappy adventure before I begin. I'd like to do this in the most efficient/least painful way.
thanks a lot!

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Re: I need some advice on aspect ratios and re-compositing
by Walter Soyka on Jul 24, 2012 at 2:19:17 pm

Unfortunately, there's no way to automatically stretch 4:3 to 16:9 and have everything work out perfectly.

You have a few options:

Pillarboxing -- Composite the 4:3 original within the 16:9 frame, fitting it to the height of the frame, leaving bars on the sides.
Image & effects pillarboxing -- Stretch the 4:3 image horizontally to 16:9, blur it, darken it, etc. Composite the original 4:3 image above, possibly adding a glow or drop shadow.
Pan & scan -- Stretch the image uniformly to 16:9 width. This will crop off the top and bottom. Recompose as necessary.
Non-linear scale -- Using a displacement map or mesh warp, pull the edges of the frame out more than the center. This will leave objects nearer the center of the frame closer to their original aspect ratio, and will distort objects more as they approach the edges of the frame.

Really, though, for best results, you should re-work the original 4:3 comp in 16:9, manually adjusting the placement of objects to fit the new aspect ratio.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog - What I'm thinking when my workstation's thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

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Re: I need some advice on aspect ratios and re-compositing
by Stephen Evans on Jul 24, 2012 at 3:58:06 pm

thanks a lot, that's very helpful.
if choose the pillarbox route, what would the dimensions of the pillars be?

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Re: I need some advice on aspect ratios and re-compositing
by Walter Soyka on Jul 24, 2012 at 4:11:54 pm

You have 4:3 720x540.

There are two common 16:9 raster sizes: 1280x720 and 1920x1080. Scaling your existing comp up, you'd end up with either 960x720 or 1440x1080.

If you go to 1280x720, you'll have two pillars of 160px each; if you go to 1920x1080, you'll have two pillars of 240px each.

In either case, you can simply drop your existing 4:3 comp into a 16:9 comp in Ae, choose Layer > Transform > Fit to Comp Height. No need to create the bars yourself -- you can just set the comp's background color (or place a comp-sized solid behind).

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog - What I'm thinking when my workstation's thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

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Re: I need some advice on aspect ratios and re-compositing
by Tudor "Ted" Jelescu on Jul 25, 2012 at 7:50:41 pm

You can always use the Scale Composition Script that comes with AE to resize your composition to 1280x720. You will need then to manually adjust any elements that do not fit the frame as they should (ex- a 4:3 background that needs now to be 16:9)

Tudor "Ted" Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

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