Bringing HDV 1080 50i footage into After Effects.
by Conan Stott
on
May 4, 2008 at 7:17:23 am
HI... I am currently on a project that is HDV, 1080 50i and I have problems bringing it into After effects. The closest composition setting I can get is 1080 25 but when I bring in the clip it is completely the wrong size and shape... can anyone tell me what composiiton settings I should be using?
Re: Bringing HDV 1080 50i footage into After Effects. by Dave LaRonde on May 5, 2008 at 3:24:27 pm
Dave's Stock Answer #1:
If the footage you imported into AE is any kind of the following -- Native HDV, MPEG1, MPEG2, mp4, m2t, H.261 or H.264 -- you need to convert it to a different codec.
These kinds of footage use temporal, or interframe compression. They have keyframes at regular intervals, containing complete frame information. However, the frames in between do NOT have complete information. Interframe codecs toss out duplicated information.
In order to maintain peak rendering efficiency, AE needs complete information for each and every frame. But because these kinds of footage contain only partial information, AE freaks out, resulting in a wide variety of problems.
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What you are seeing is normal. HDV pixels are NOT square: they're wide, and AE is showing you the square-pixel look of the footage.
The term for wide pixels or skinny pixels is called Pixel Aspect Ratio. For a complete understanding of what's going on, I'd look it up Pixel Aspect Ratio in AE Help.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
