help with aspect ratios in picture-in-picture

[slyttle]

I am having a lot of trouble getting images in an overlay track to display correctly when using the picture-in-picture affect.

Here is the scenario:

I have a scanned image of a letter that I want to have fly in from one side of the screen and settle down at an angle on the other side. To do this, I am using the picture-in-picture filter in the following way:

1. put the jpg image image into the overlay track
2. set the allignment to "fit to screen" and also select "keep aspect ratio"
3. Then I apply the picture-in-picture filter
4. set the transparency to 1 so I cn see the background in the main track
5. finally, I create the movement I want by customizing the filter

Everything looks great in the edit window, but then it comes time to render it (in HD 16:9) it ends up being extremely distorted ... (squished and rotated looking).

I have a feeling this has something to do with setting the "keep aspect ratio", but if I don't use that option, it looks completely distorted in the edit window and I am unable to correctly construct the movement I need.

How do I get it to render in the same way as it shows on the edit window???

Thanks for any help you can offer!

-Sheldon

[mitchell65]

Hi Sheldon
I think the answer may lie in your point no 5. Depends what PinP selection you are using. Some will distort the picture, that's what they are meant to do for "dynamic" effect. If you choose "Postcard Pretty" for example and then edit the rotation that will squash up or down. There are so many variations .

[slyttle]

The thing is, I am not choosing any of those preset treatments ... I am just:

1. adjusting the picture X / Y over time
2.adjusting the size over time
3.adjusting the Z rotate over time

I leave the shadow constant as well as everything else.

I also thought that maybe because the picture I am trying to manipulate is in portrate orientation, it could get distorted when rendered in 16:9 ..... so I took the original picture and put it within a 16:9 canvas and then made the canvas transparent where there was no image. When I applied the same attributes and filter customization the image was very distored on the editor window AND when rendered + the parts of the image that I had made transparent came through as if it was a giant border.

I've attached a screen capture of the issue to this message ... perhaps seeing what I am talking about might help spark an idea or two.

thx

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

When you say HD 16:9 what actual template did you use?

[slyttle]

I've tried it on various formats with similar results ... right now I am using DV - NTSC HD (16:9), but I also tried WMV HD 1080p, and Blu-ray MPEG2 1920X1080, and 1440X1080 .... all with similar results.

I've made a few more adjustments to the project this morning and will be rerendering again ... will let you know the results.

Thanks

[Black Lab]

I don't know if this has anything to do with your problem or not, but I just experienced this over the last couple of days. I was trying to render a project to a WMV file. I was choosing the Custom option, Neptune Best Quality (720x480). I was using the default settings, which include the Display Aspect Ratio: Source Frame Size (my project was 16:9).

I had two problems with this. First, all my text/titles were moved - actually shifted to the right. The second problem was the entire video was shrunk. It looked like it was 16:9 ratio, but there were black borders around the entire thing.

The only way I could fix the shifting of the titles was not to render the project, but to render a MPEG2 of the project that I had previously created. That worked fine and I could not see any quality loss.

Problem number two was fixed by changing the Display Aspect Ratio setting from the default Source Fame Size to 16:9.

Again, I don't know if our problems are the same, but they sound similar, considering you were also rendering to WMV.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Jeff / slyttle

It may be a Non Square Pixel Rendering problem.

Uncheck this option in Project Properties and in the Save folder-Options

[Black Lab]

I tried that and it made no difference.