I thought I understood pixel aspect ratio!!!

M

markyf

Well-known member
I hate PAR. It causes such problems when working with other people in other programs. Here's my latest...

I'm finishing a short film where the animator is working separately in After Effects. He's been rendering out progress files and uploading them to Vimeo for me to see. I haven't tried importing these files into FCP until today.

Today I downloaded the video from Vimeo (720x480) and imported it into Final Cut. It looked stretched vertically and only looked correct when I unticked correct for aspect ratio. So right away I know he'll probably be sending me an incorrect file from AE. I'm glad I caught this now.

In my attempts to understand how it went wrong I exported some of my own footage from the FCP timeline at 720x480. I opened it up in QT Player and it looked fine (vs. my capture scratch footage that looks skewed in quicktime).

I then thought that if I reimported this recent FCP export back into Final Cut it would stretch it vertically like his AE file, but it didn't. Footage looked fine and was squashed when I untick correct for aspect ratio.

I'm confused and am really worried about what I should do. My animator and I are not getting along and I have to get the right files from him the first time or it's going to be a nightmare. He is not that technically savvy.

Please help me understand how this works. I don't get how two files that both appear correct in QT Player are then interpreted different in Final Cut? And what export settings should be be using to get me files out of AE and into Final Cut? Does it depend on his composition settings? And if he hasn't used the DV NTSC composition settings, what export settings should he be using to get me back on track?

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks,

Mark
 
Mark,

I never knew you can 'transfer' files via Vimeo.
Curious, is Vimeo possibly altering the video?
(or is it just a file transfer?)

Did you shoot DV NTSC anamorphic?

Shawn
 
Yeah... just to clarify. These aren't the final files we'll be using... they are compressed for web posting. Vimeo allows you to download the file that's been uploaded. I doubt Vimeo is altering the video but I'll run a test of that myself right now. Good point.

No, we shot DV NTSC 4:3 letterboxed but he's originating the animated sequences in whatever format he chooses anyways.

Cheers,

Mark
 
What it your editing workflow?

I personally would go the route of having him give you NTSC Animation codec or NTSC ProRes files.
(depending on what exactly he is doing)

No sure why there is an issue with the PAR.
Sounds like he is outputting/inputting incorrectly.

Shawn
 
Yes... I would describe it as a nightmare. I don't know anything about the NTSC Animation codec. Is this 720x480? Are there different 720x480s? One square pixels? One non-square pixels? Or does it depend on his composition settings in After Effects?
 
I don't believe you can choose square or non-square upon output, but i may be wrong.

I believe what happens is FCP knows to fix the PAR, but when you bring it into something
like AE, the user controls those settings.

Sorry i dont have a clear cut solution. Testing is the best way to sort it out.

Shawn
 
Can someone who's an expert here please chime in :) I'm speaking to the animator later today and need to know exactly how the AE files should be for a DV NTSC 4:3 non-anomorphic sequence. In their native format, should they be squashed horizontally like when I open my capture scratch files through QT Player?
 
Doesn't AE have presets for DV? It should be 720x480 w/a PAR of .9. When you play it back in QT Player it will probably look wrong because QT doesn't always display the proper PAR.


-A
 
adkimery said:
When you play it back in QT Player it will probably look wrong because QT doesn't always display the proper PAR.


-A
Click to expand...

That's the annoying part. His 720x480 file looks right in QT but imports wrong into Final Cut (the corrected pixel aspect ratio is too tall). My 720x480 file that I exported out of Final Cut looks right in QT and imports right into Final Cut (the corrected pixel aspect ratio is right). So should changing his PAR setting on export to 0.9 solve this?
 
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