Converting Movies - Adobe 12040118 - After Effects Standard Tutorial

Converting movies

Convert footage items between video formats
Convert DV footage from PAL to NTSC using pulldown
Scaling a movie down
Scaling a movie up
Create a composition and render source footage items simultaneously
Introduce 3:2 pulldown
Test field-rendering order
Convert footage items between video formats
You can use After Effects to convert one kind of video to another. When converting video, keep in mind the following guidelines:
Changes in resolution may result in a loss of picture clarity, especially when up-converting from a standard-definition format to a high-
definition format.
Changes in frame rate may require the use of frame blending to smooth out the interpolated frames. For longer footage items, the use of
frame blending can result in very long render times.
1. Import the footage you're converting into a composition using the preset of the format you're converting to. Example: if you're converting
NTSC to PAL, add your NTSC footage item to a composition with the appropriate PAL composition settings preset.
2. Select the layer with the footage to be converted and choose Layer > Transform > Fit To Comp Width (or Fit To Comp Height).
Note: For converting between two formats with the same frame aspect ratio, either of these two Fit commands does the same thing; if the
frame aspect ratios differ (for example, going from 4:3 to 16:9), fitting to width or height chooses between cropping or letterboxing the
resulting image.
3. Do one of the following:
If your footage has no scene cuts, choose Layer > Frame Blending > Pixel Motion. Pixel Motion provides the best results for
interpolation of frames, but may require long rendering times.
If your footage has scene cuts, or if you want to sacrifice quality for shorter rendering times, choose Layer > Frame Blending > Frame
Mix.
4. Choose Composition > Add To Render Queue.
5. In the Render Queue panel, next to Render Settings, choose the appropriate preset from the menu. For example, if you're converting to DV
footage, select DV Settings from the menu.
6. In the Render Queue panel, next to Output Module, choose the appropriate output module preset from the menu, or choose Custom to enter
custom settings. For example, if you're converting to DV PAL, choose the D1/DV-PAL output module preset with the audio sampling rate
that you require.
7. Click the name of the output module preset that you chose in step 6 to select additional Format Options.
8. Specify a name and destination for the output file using the controls to the right of the Output To heading in the Render Queue panel. (See
Specify filenames and locations for rendered output.)
9. Click the Render button to render your movie.
Convert DV footage from PAL to NTSC using pulldown
Because After Effects can easily convert film (24 fps) to video (29.97 fps) using 3:2 pulldown, you can perform a clean PAL-to-NTSC transfer by
setting up 25-fps PAL video to act like 24-fps film. This lets you apply 3:2 pulldown to the footage when converting to 29.97 fps. This technique
works especially well for progressive (noninterlaced) PAL video.
1. Create a new composition with the DV NTSC or DV NTSC Widescreen preset.
2. Import your DV PAL footage into the new composition.
3. Select the layer with the DV PAL footage, and choose Layer > Transform > Fit To Comp Width (or Fit To Comp Height).
4. Do one of the following:
To preserve audio synchronization but slightly lower the pitch, choose Layer > Time > Time Stretch, and then enter 95.904 in the Stretch
Factor box.
To preserve audio pitch but not synchronization, or for clips without audio, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the footage
item in the Project panel, select Interpret Footage > Main, select Conform To Frame Rate, and then enter 23.976 in the Conform To
To the top
To the top