Scaling 1920x1080 down to 640x480 in AFX for Avenue

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greek_fire
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Scaling 1920x1080 down to 640x480 in AFX for Avenue

Post by greek_fire »

Hey everyone!

I really tried posting this on AFX forums but for some reason just wasn't having any luck with the f*****g captchas!!!

So anyway this is ultimately for Avenue so I think someone could advise me....

I'm doing new shoots in 1920x1080 and working with the clips in AfterFX. I have a immediate need for 640x480 clips for VJ sets via Avenue... But I know that later I will need full HD for production work. So I'm lost as to what the best workflow is.

I know it's best to work in high res and then scale down. But it seems to me that if I work in high res, then copy everything over into a new comp at 640 and try to scale it, I will end up with some serious issues with masks getting out of wack etc... Unless there is a way to lock everything in place and do a global scale that I'm not aware of.

The other way would be to work in HD, render it out, then bring it back in and scale it down for a lo res comp. However that seems kind of convoluted, and would almost take just as long as making separate comps and doing the tweaking twice, IMO. Does someone have a better workflow?

Sorry for the noob question, I've just switched to HD cams for production but my VJ sets will stay @ 640 for now.

GeeEs
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Re: Scaling 1920x1080 down to 640x480 in AFX for Avenue

Post by GeeEs »

1920x1080 and 640x480 are not the same aspect ratio. (16:9 vs 4:3) So you will always end up with black bars/scaling problems/stretched/compressed image... (The 1920x1080 video's are perfectly usabale inside Avenue, but don't use "scale to composition" funtion if your composition is not the same resolution/aspect ratio !!!! Use the scale slider on clip level to fill the composition!) And make sure you convert them to DXV, for best fps!

My personal method is to just (batch) rescale/crop the clips to 640x480 / 800x600 (yes, you will loose some of the left and right edges when cropping and have black bars on top and bottom when scaling... ) and archive the HD footage for later production. (or when i get a very powerful laptop ;-) )
After rescaling, I convert the clips to DXV. Have a seperate Avenue folder with DXV clips and a seperate archive with raw working footage.
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VJair
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Re: Scaling 1920x1080 down to 640x480 in AFX for Avenue

Post by VJair »

check out the render queue in after effects - in the output module there are cropping / scaling options.

you can make your own settings for the output module via the AE prefernces so you dont need to re-enter them every time and you can then use the render queue to batch process.

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