Please help !!! - Simply Maya User Community

# 1 04-10-2006 , 02:18 AM

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Compositing problems !!

Hi, Im kinda new to this stuff but Im hoping someone can help me all the same. Basically Im exporting from Maya as a targa sequence & compositing the animation with live footage in After Effects (Roger Rabbit style), now the composited footage plays & looks fine in the AE comp window, but once I've re-exported the comp in Premiere as a regular AVI the Maya portion of the end result becomes horribly pixelated, the "background" live action DV footage is unaffected & looks just fine, strangely enough if I export my AE comp (from AE or Premiere) as a Quicktime Movie it looks & plays perfectly, but once I put the QT onto DVD & play it in a standalone DVD player it becomes badly pixelated once again, which makes me suspect the compression but Im not sure, is there some kind of "specialised" compression plug-in or program I need for this sort of work? I must have tried EVERY combination of render/export setting AE/Maya has in the last 8 months, & several different programs, I even got identical results when I did the same thing using 3DS Max !! .. If anyone can give me a few pointers Id be SOOOOOOOOOO grateful, thanks in advance....................... J.

Last edited by pantherina; 04-10-2006 at 02:38 AM.

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# 2 04-10-2006 , 02:31 AM

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Render AE comp same to targa sequence and re-exported the comp in Premiere form there avi or do what ever Please take note make sutiable topic name like AE composited problem

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Albert Einstein.

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# 3 04-10-2006 , 03:20 AM

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if you're trying to match rendered footage with footage from dv you might want to make sure your pixel aspect ratio is the same with your rendered footage... i'm pretty sure if you change your pixel aspect ratio (found under resolution settings in render globals - or render settings, depending on which ver. of maya you've got) to .9 - which is the aspect ratio for dv footage - then it should match up better and not cause problems... but i've never tried to composite two things with differing aspect ratios before so *shrug*

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# 4 04-10-2006 , 03:24 AM

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Thanks 4 that, I'll give it a try..................... J.

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# 5 04-10-2006 , 03:33 AM

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Thanks 4 that, I'll give it a try..................... J.

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# 6 04-10-2006 , 06:00 AM

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No, still no luck....... J.

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# 7 04-10-2006 , 06:04 AM

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when you render out your comp from AE what are your settings?

(resolution, compression, etc)

and how big is the resulting file?

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# 8 04-10-2006 , 06:32 AM

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I've rendered out with both animation & DV footage matching exactly, & every other variant in between, but generally the best looking Maya/DV footage comp settings are :

Quality Current settings
Resolution Current settings
Size 720x576
Disk cache Current settings
Frame blending Current settings
Field render Upper f. first
3/2 pulldown Off
Motion blur Off for all layers
Override shutter angle Grayed out
Proxy use Current settings
Effects Current settings
Solo switches Current settings
Guide layers Current settings

Frame rate 25fps (PAL, I'm based in England)

Output module

Microsoft DV PAL 48khz

Now I know these settings are probably not perfect, but this particular configuration results in a flawless composition, however once I've re-exported it as an AVI in Premiere I get the same result.

No matter what its like going into Premiere it ALWAYS comes out with the same pixelated "rough" quality, unless I Quicktime it from Premiere, even that gives identical results once its been encoded for DVD tho, weird................................ J.

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# 9 04-10-2006 , 06:40 AM

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Now I know these settings are probably not perfect, but this particular configuration results in a flawless composition, however once I've re-exported it as an AVI in Premiere I get the same result.

Originally Posted by

when you say re-exported it as an avi in premiere, do you mean render it out? or do you take your existing comp and actually export it?

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# 10 04-10-2006 , 06:46 AM

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I actually export it from there as a Microsoft DV AVI, I didnt think you could do anything else with an AE composition !!??? ... Premiere has a render out option ???

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# 11 04-10-2006 , 07:05 AM

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ok let me get this straight... you render out from maya, and then take it into what program? if you take it straight to after effects you should just render out your final composition from there (and i mean render, not export... you can use many more codecs from the render queue than from the simple export option). it seems that premiere's an unnecessary step.

what program do you use to burn the resulting movie file to dvd?

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# 12 04-10-2006 , 07:26 AM

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I render a Targa sequence from Maya, composite it with DV footage in AE, render from there as a composition & finally export the composition as a Microsoft DV AVI in Premiere Pro.

I've used EVERY SINGLE AE codec & compression setting AE has to offer, whether exporting or rendering from there, all with similar results, the settings I mentioned earlier DO give flawless comps from AE, but once I "finalize" the comp in Premiere pro as an AVI (I find it plays better that way, also it saves space) I get the same problem all over again.

Also, I must have used dozens of different DVD burning programs over the last 6 months or so, but most recently I've been using Adobe Encore, but the movies always look as bad, whether they are AVI's or QT movies, cheers, J.

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Compositing problems !!

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