PDA

View Full Version : compositing cg into live action

sheefy
12-12-2005, 01:17 PM
Hi Guys,

I want to composite 3d stuff into live action footage and am having a few problems setting everything up. Basically i'm working with PAL DV Widescreen (720 x 576 - progressive). Because this format uses a pixel ratio of 1.422 do I need to render out my 3d stuff in the same format? Or should I convert the live action footage to a resolution of 1024 x 576 so that I'm working with square pixels and dont have to look at squashed up images when working with my 3d scenes?

How is this normally done? I'm completely new at this so anyhelp would be greatly appreciated.
scrimski
12-12-2005, 01:24 PM
I had to do a bunch of FX jobs on widescreen PAL (in AE) and I found it very unhandy to work with non-square pixels, so I converted them to a square pixel format. Not sure if this is the right way, but it worked well for this .
sheefy
12-13-2005, 04:43 AM
Thanks for your reply scrimski, just wondering what technique you used to convert to square pixels in After Effects. Atm, I'm creating a new comp with a res of 1024 x 576 (sq px) and importing my sequence into that and scaling it horizontally. Would there be a better way to achieve this?
scrimski
12-13-2005, 10:07 AM
If I remember right the conversion was done in the export process from the editing app into a frame sequence.
Interpret the footage with the right pixel aspect ratio and AE displays it right, so there should be no need to scale
jasonsco
12-14-2005, 07:10 AM
Personally, I think it's better to render with the correct non-square pixel aspect ratio, then import those files into a compositor, and only VIEW them as square pixels. That way, everything will look correct, but the original aspect ratio integrity is maintained. Then you won't lose any quality in the scaling down, and then you can export back to video.
CGTalk Moderation
12-14-2005, 07:10 AM
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.