Datasheet

■ Setting Up a Composite 31
space) menus. It’s important to set these menus at the start of each project. Chapter 2
discusses bit depths and color space in great detail. For this tutorial, Depth may be
left at 8 Bits Per Channel and Working Space may be left set to None. Click the OK
button.
2. Choose Composition
→ New Composition. In the Composition Settings dialog box,
change the Preset menu to HDV/HDTV 720 29.97. This sets the width to 1280, the
height to 720, and the frame rate to 29.97. Change the Duration cell to 60, and click
the OK button. Comp 1 is added to the Project panel.
3. Choose File
→ Import → File. In the Import File dialog box, browse for interlaced.mov
in the Footage folder on the DVD.
interlaced.mov is added to the Project panel.
LMB+drag the QuickTime from the Project panel to the outline layer of the Comp 1
tab in the Timeline panel.
4. Play back the timeline. The motion of the camera zoom appears smooth. In reality,
After Effects has incorrectly interpreted the field dominance as upper. This is not vis-
ible in the viewer of the Composition panel. This is due to the program displaying only
one field per frame when playing back the timeline for the composition. To see all the
fields, double-click the footage name. This opens the footage in the Footage panel. To
step through the fields one at a time, press the Page Down and Page Up buttons. Page
Down moves forward, starting with the dominant field for each frame. Page Up moves
backward. Note that the fields appear out of order. Play back the footage using the
Footage panel’s time controls. The motion appears erratic.
5. To solve the field problem, select the
interlaced.mov footage in the Project panel,
RMB+click, and choose Interpret Footage
→ Main. In the Interpret Footage dialog
box, change Separate Fields to Lower Frame First and click OK. Play the footage using
the Footage panel’s time controls. The motion is now smooth (that is, the fields are no
longer out of order).
6. To convert the field-separated footage into progressive-frame footage, you can ren-
der out an image sequence. To do so, select Comp 1 in the Project panel and choose
Composition
→ Add To Render Queue. A Render Queue tab is added to the Timeline
panel with Comp 1 listed as the first queue. Click the word Lossless. In the Output
Module Settings dialog box, change the Format menu to Targa Sequence. Click the
OK button. In the Render Queue tab, note the phrase
Comp 1_[##].tga next to Output
To. This is the default name given to the soon-to-be-rendered frames. To change to a
different render directory, click the phrase
Comp 1_[##].tga. In the Output Movie To
dialog box, browse for a directory. You can also type in a new render name in the File
Name cell. The
[##]. portion of the name is critical for proper frame numbering. Two
pound signs indicate two numeric placeholders, which is suitable for a timeline dura-
tion that runs between 10 and 99 frames. Click the Save button to close the Output
Movie To dialog box. Click the Render button.
7. To examine the rendered footage, import it into the project. Choose File
→ Import →
File. In the Import File dialog box, browse for the rendered footage. Because it’s an
image sequence, you need only select the first frame of the sequence. The program
automatically imports the entire sequence as a single unit. Double-click the new
footage’s name in the Project panel to open it in the Footage panel. Step through the
footage one frame at a time to examine the quality. Since the footage was rendered
without interlacing, there are no fields. Note how the footage progresses in coarser
steps. Every other field was lost during the render. Nevertheless, the footage is fairly
high resolution, so it still creates smooth motion. The tutorial is complete. A sample
After Effects project is included as
ae1.aep in the Tutorials folder on the DVD.
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