After Effects Advice

[Machuse]

I have an introduction to a fashion show to complete for friday. Its going to be really tough but i was wondering if anyone was good with after effects and would be available to give me any advice or small bits of tidbits if i get stuck somewhere.

I do have an immediate question tho. What resoultion should i be working in. Ive done some small stuff in after effect for flash but nothing that was going to go straight to a projector(like this is). Should i do it at 1024X576? or something else


thanks for your help

[SlowRoasted]

im not sure about the res, but if its going to be shown on a television screen you need to make sure to keep all your graphics in the safe area where it wont get cut off on the side of the screen. There are guides to show you where it is in AE somewhere.

[Machuse]

o ok cool. I will look into that.

I see your in Macon, im in Atlanta.
How much do u use After effects?

[jsn.greenbag]

if it goes straight to a projector from a computer you don't need to worry about the safe zones. depending on the projector, you should worry more about colors and brightness/contrast, that can differ alot from a computer monitor. a (bad) projector usually darkens everything.

not sure about resolution, 1024x576 sounds good.. (the 16:9 format always looks nice)

[Machuse]

Cool thanks for the help greenbag, Ill keep yall posted

[Machuse]

Ive done a little mroe snoopring and i found out that pretty much standard resolution for video is 720X480.

The people that gave me advice also said that I should render the movie uncompressed and either play it uncompressed. or compresse it with a free compression tool that microsoft put out for windows media.

Here is the answer verbatium:
I would create your comp at 720 x 480. That should give you the crispness you need. If this is going to be played back on a computer, then I would export it out without any compression, as long as the computer you are using can handle a large video file. Export it out as an uncompressed avi. If there's a chance that the computer you will be using won't be able to playback that large of a file, then I would look into exporting out as an mov using the Sorenson 3 codec, which I have found produces good results and smaller file sizes. The trick with all of this is making sure the computer you are going to use can handle the video playback. That means you might also need to make sure it has the latest windows media player and quicktime player.

Microsoft also offers a free windows media encoder program on their website.
You can import in an uncompressed avi and export out a really nice .wmv file (optimized for windows media player 9) that has a low file size and great compression. Sometimes I have used this route when I have had trouble with computers that don't have the codecs needed for playback. If you go this route, you will be able to playback the video as long as you have the latest Windows Media Player and Windows XP and it looks great. Here's a link to the free encoder:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/default.aspx