A Question About Image and Frame Sizing

[Rob_T]

I know the pink lines are standard "safe area" lines but I've discovered that once I import my AVI renders into Adobe Premier that I'm getting thin black lines on either side of the screen. It's too late to resolve at this point and this project is just a silly fan thing anyway so it isn't important at the moment. That said, I do want to resolve the issue before I start filming my more important project.

 

Additionally, it occurred to me that, when it came to making images (JPEGS) for my comic once I'm done modeling things, I would want to be able to control the exact size of the JPEG produced.

 

Is there such a way to adjust what is rendered as far as size goes?

 

I see there is something in the save to file advanced settings. My concern is that it says it's rendering in 640X480 but I'm still getting those black bars in Premier Pro. So that tells me that either A:M isn't really rendering in 640X480 or Premier Pro isn't interpreting the frames as 640 X 480. It's either that or I changed something somewhere other than that Render to File setting that is changing the final output without knowing it.

 

And I checked by putting something behind the frame in Premier Pro to see if the black bars were in fact black bars or they represented the end of the frame. Since I could see what was behind the image I rendered out of A:M that means the frame is smaller than what Premier Pro considers 640 X 480.

 

When I start rendering for the comic I may need some wacky shapes; and from a publishing perspective the larger I make my original images the better for me later. Also, I may want to do the Remedy Short in widescreen. So any suggestions about how to get this under control would be appreciated.

 

[largento]

My memory isn't as good as it used to be, but checking my old files reveals most of what I found out when I did the work for my Christmas animation...

 

Here's the settings I used (so that I could have it as a widescreen DVD):

 

width: 720

height: 480

pixel aspect ratio: 1.21

 

After you've rendered the footage, bring it into Premiere Pro and right-click on it and choose "Interpret Footage..." Then change the aspect ratio to "D1/DV NTSC Widescreen 16:9 (1.2121)

 

The pixel aspect ratio for video is not the same as the pixel aspect ratio on your computer. By default A:M renders square pixels for computers.

 

Note: If your copy of Premiere Pro is prior to CS4, then it's aspect ratios are faulty. Adobe fixed them in CS4. I don't know how to account for this problem.

 

If you're doing standard 4:3 for TV, use an aspect ratio of .91

 

I'll point out that this is for NTSC video. PAL is different.

[Gerry]

What Mark said. You can't take anything for granted when it comes to pixels and their shapes when converting from one app to another.

[Rob_T]

Oh boy. I'm using Premier Pro 1.5 so I'm basically screwed then because no way can I afford to upgrade right now and the ratios are obviously screwed up.

 

Thanks for the tips and info.

 

I suppose I'll have to start looking for some kind of translation. Time to search the web.

[largento]

I don't think you're screwed, Rob. Just look out there and find out how to use the correct aspect ratios.

 

As to rendering for panels, welcome to the same exploratory place I'm in. :-)

 

Rendering at the actual panel ratio is bad, since you'll have some wild perspective going on. I've been rendering my frames almost square, accounting for where they'll crop. For the extreme of the one strip I did where all four panels were one render, I brought in a strip template as a layer and placed it in front of the shot so that I could see where things were and then turned it off for the final render. I suppose I could do that with the individual frames, too, but I trust my own sense of space. :-)

[robcat2075]

I haven't used premiere in a long time but way back when it had the ability to scale any video any amount vertically or horizontally. So I'm sure it does now.

 

If your render isn't fitting your screen you can stretch it to do so in Premiere.

[HomeSlice]

In addition to everything everyone else has already said ....

Please don't render to jpeg images. At the very least, render to png. (TGA is best).

There will be times when you will have to do some work on the rendered image in a paint app. It helps tremendously if your original image is uncompressed or uses a lossless compression.