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Just a follow up on earlier posts. I listed AfterEffects as a potential program to use. I know, I know it's not free, but it is available in a lot of schools - as is the entire Adobe line of Software. It was pointed out as not being a nonlinear editor. Which in essance is true, but it does alot more than all this free stuff people are talking about. This aside, I pointed out that the essance of Non-Linear Editing is to be able to combine Audio and Video Clips or portions there of. Another benefit that I wanted to pointout was that AfterEffects is Resolution independent. Well, what the heck does that mean? It means that you are not limited to Video Frame and Pixel Aspect Ratios (width to hight ratios) In Video it is roughly 4x3 (ie 320x240 (half res) or 640x480 (full res). There are other closly sililar ratios that are'nt exactly 4x3- such as D1-NTSC Which is a non-square pixel format that displays as 720x486. Oh boy, whats this non-square stuff about. That can be another post if anytone needs to know let me know...
All the above relates to Video Editing Systems that are Resolution dependent. When you capture or import video it will translate the footage to the proper resolution for your project (or project settings- if you even have a choice) even the Aclaimed Avid is bound by these constraints. If I import a picture that is 1024x768 (maybe a screen grab) most edit softwares will compress this to the project resolution (like 720x486) so you get a distorted picture that probably is noisey and buzzy as well.
Aftereffects will import Any Format at any Resolution and keep it that way. Well, does this have any good use? The Video resolutions are designed to translate properly when displayed on a TV screen. In fact there are even special Resolutions for HDTV and Widescreen TV and the like. Well the fact is that you will not always be confined to there aspect ratios if you do a project that will be played on web or on CDRom.
Case Study1: After 9-11-01 a client of mine decided they didnt want to have their yearly Partners' Meeting (Jan 02) in the same format as in the past- Normally it was a celebration and gathering that people flew in from all over the world to attend. They didnt feel much like celebrating and they knew some would not want to travel. So we did a webcast. Instead of a standard webcast where somone shoots video and we encode it and they provide a link to the fottage on some webpage, we designed an inteface that incorporated various aspect ratios that were seamlessly embeded into the BG of the webpage. That means the graphics that made the webpage continued seemlessly behind the senior parner that was speaking. On some clips it was a standard resolutiom, but on others, there were two partners sitting side by side from the waist up. This became a format that was about 1.5 longer than normal and about .75 the height. All the final edits and compositing was preformed in Aftereffects. Then we encoded and embedded the footage.
Case Study 2: Just last week I was asked to illustrate an Audio Voice over of Four Clinical Studies of 3D RA Imaging (Moving X-Ray Imaging) for a medical company. The Footage would be chown on a CD and I was to use existing footage of non-standard AVI that came out of the X-Ray Equipment. As well as High Resolution stills and other video formats. The mix of footage and non-standard formats could only be done with AE, which included importing MPEGs which before that latest version of AE couldnt even be done with this program. The result was a 400x400 MPEG footage of (4) 1.5min to 2min that completely synced to the VO track. All edits were preformed in AE.
I have done countless pans, pushes, and pulls on high resolution photos. The final renders were later imported and edited in an Avid or Media 100 System
Think out side the box- the 4x3 box, that is...
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