Aspect Ratios and parent track motion

kairosmatt wrote on 3/6/2008, 8:04 PM

I'm editing 16x9 HD, my properties are set to the HDV 1080-24p preset.

I've created a parent track with an interviewed person who is green screened. Below her I have a child track that contains the background.

I'm using parent track motion to begin zoomed in on both shots a little, then slowly pull back. In preview it looks great, like the camera is pulling back on the talent and location at the same time. I've previewed it at Best (Full) on an external monitor. Awesome.

When I go to render, it sucks. Everything is letterboxed, as it should be, but when I get to the interview part she is well outside the letterbox and as it zooms in she kinda goes back in.

How do I fix this?
It seems I have to tell parent motion to crop, but I can't quite figure it out.
Thanks

Comments

farss wrote on 3/6/2008, 8:28 PM

I think you need to create a master parent track that controls both of the child tracks. The parent track should be empty.

BTW, probably getting really technically correct but you might like to fiddle the depth of the foreground and background so the two track during the zoom (or is it a push).

Bob.

kairosmatt wrote on 3/7/2008, 5:25 AM

Thanks Bob,
I hadn't thought of having an empty parent track, I can see how that keeps the timeline tiddier. But it didn't prevent the aspect ration change on the output side.

I think I figured it out-sort of. It has to do with render settings. If I render out, say a quicktime that is 426 pixels wide by 240, which is 16x9 ratio, it works.

But with MPEG, I tried to output a slightly modified DVD architect template (using both
720 by 406 and 420 by 747) and last night I was just getting an error message.
This morning I tried it again, and it actually worked, but DVD Architect needs to recompress it.

I also tried rendering with the widescreen template, and this is close, but for some reason its still not quite right. Any thoughts on making the MPEG work (without recompression?

kairosmatt wrote on 3/7/2008, 5:29 AM

I also have this same problem with Boris Graffiti as a plugin. My work around for that has always been to render out of Graffiti, and import that movie file.

If I'm making a quicktime or AVI, changing the render pixel ration would work for that too I think-haven't tested it yet.

But for MPEG, the only work around I can think of is to render out those sections, and reinsert the created movies into the timeline. I could render out uncompressed AVI or use a lossless codec like Raylight or Cineform. Does this make sense, or is there a way to get MPEGs with skewed pixel sizes into DVDA?

farss wrote on 3/7/2008, 1:23 PM

Don't know if I can help much as everything just works for me, I don't even have to think about it. That said:

All my video source are 16:9 i.e. shot on a 16:9 camera. Vegas sees them as 16:9 too (check media properties). All my graphics are square PAR. My project is Widescreen, my preview window is set to Simulate Aspect Ratio. I encode using a Widescreen template directly from the T/L and author Widescreen DVDs in DVDA.

Bob.

kairosmatt wrote on 3/7/2008, 3:09 PM

Bob,
Thanks for putting some thought into it, I'm away from my Vegas computer right now, but I'm going to see if I have "simulate aspect ratio" for previews. Turning it on might make it easier to trouble shoot my problem. When I render a widescreen DVDA its much closer, but still slightly off!

Oh yeah, and thanks too for the suggestion about zooming the two tracks slightly differently to simulate depth (at least thats what I think you meant!)

kairosmatt