Problem: Pixel Aspect in Animation

[Philip kelly]

Hi

I have a simple issue.
I set the Animation 1280 x720 pixel aspect 1.0, and it comes out stretched.
Can someone tell me why, the preview looks fine the output is different.

Thank you

Philip

[TomG]

Hi Philip,

I don't fully understand what you are describing - could you share screen grabs of your render set up, and of the "stretched" results that you are seeing? Are you saving directly to a movie format, or as a series of still images (the latter is always recommended by the way)? If you are saving to a movie format, what are you using to view the animation as perhaps it is stretching it to fit in some way? When you say preview, do you mean how things look in the Corona VFB?

Thanks!
   Tom

[Philip kelly]

Avi Output straight out of Max, standard set up, for quick turnaround.

The format is 1280 x 720 Pixel aspect is 1.0
looks fine in the VFB
but comes out per the attached .

[TomG]

Rendering direct to a movie format is never recommended (lots of reasons, one major one being if anything goes wrong, all output is lost and you have to render from the start again, versus just having to pick up rendering where you left off if you are rendering to frames). Compositing the frames into animation in post also lets you control video compression etc better too. Lots of free applications for doing just that, so it needn't cost any money :) I can say from years of rendering animation that there is no benefit, and many drawbacks, to rendering straight to a movie format.

I suspect this is due to the viewer application doing something to the avi - another reason to render to still frames is you can open an individual frame and make sure it is fine. Even if you plan on still rendering to movie format direct, I'd do that just once, even just for a few frames, and make sure your images are coming out correctly. But basically, there is no way I can think of that your 1280x720 render is not still 1280x720, which would mean it is being displayed incorrectly in the viewer (that is, whatever is playing back the animation). You could right click on the avi file and check what dimensions it says it is.

Hope this helps!

[Philip kelly]

Thank you for the reply.
I brought it into Aftereffects and its the same.

Can't figure it out.

[TomG]

Can you share any of the rendered output? Either the avi, or even better if you can render a few frames to stills and share those? Even if you delete the objects in the scene and just leave the walls and floor :)

I take it you mean you loaded the AVI into After Effects, rather than loaded a stills sequence into it? If so, then perhaps there's something in the way Max generates AVI files (I've never done it, because it is not a good route to go!) - would be most interested in what happens when rendering to a sequence of stills though.

[Philip kelly]

Ok thank you again for the feedback.
I rendered out 25 still images of the animation, brought them into AF, and they work fine.

Whats the story with the avi output, in this day and age that should be sorted by now........Horse sh*t that it is so backwards.
Is this Max again............behind on the curve.

Thank you again.

phil

[TomG]

No problem - not sure what it is with the avi output from Max, sounds like it is one more reason to avoid that workflow though and go with stills for later compositing together into an animation. Super flexible anyway, as you can re-render parts without re-rendering the whole thing, layer things more easily and work with render passes, be robust in case of failure partway through an animation's render, and more (edit, and change the compression options as necessary for file size needs, or to raise quality when a compression level isn't cutting it for a particular animation - otherwise you are "trapped" at the compression settings you had when rendering from Max).

Ultimately though, so long as you get your animation out the way you want, that's what counts!

[Philip kelly]

Tom

Thank you , I really appreciate the advise.

Take care

phil