Did aspect ratios change while I slept?
 

So emagine my surprise when I was about to finish a project and export it to a mpeg4 file suddently the aspects were off.

A 16:9 720x576 Pal project usually is transformed to 720x405 or 1024x576 in square pixels. But in CS4 those aspects no longer fit the frame. Now apparently 720x395 or 1050x576 is the new 16:9 square pixel number. what went wrong?

Obviously something changed within your system. Can you think of anything you might have changed? Installed/uninstalled software? Anything like that?

Yours is an odd one. I've never heard of footage actually changing frame size in the middle of the night. Vertical res should stay the same regardless, as should horizontal as the PAR numbers are absolute. Perhaps there's something in your conversion settings that's set wrong.

Are you using the Media Encoder to transcode? You should be able to set the specific frame height and width with a PAR of 1:1.

nothing is changed.. Infact I still have CS3 installed which works just fine, but CS4 has a number of issues that make little sense.

I am using the media encoder and all DV pal 16:9 footage has an od aspect ratio when I want to convert to square pixels. Even if I create the project to be 1024x576 the imported footage wont fit the screen as its supposed to. The difference is small and kinda negledgeble, but still...If you forinstance scale down the DV footage inside the square pixel project, it changes aspect slighty. Actually just clicking the frame with your mouse and then deselecting while its scaled makes it jump from one aspect to another...

Hi,

Is it in all CODECs or just with mpeg4?

Seems to be all of them. Further testings show that its not the codec changing the frame. Instead a 1024x576 square pixel frame in CS4 is slightly more narrow horisontally than in CS3. I can see the effect long before I export the project. It might be a bug where DV or PAL pixels are not counted correctly, which is a reasonable assesement since its now possible to have multiple sequenses inside the same project whith all different resolutions and aspect ratios.

You can experience the effect by making a project and creating 2 sequenses. One with a standard DV pal 16:9 (1.4587), and another with square pixels 1024x576 which is the corresponding pixel count to 16:9 pal. By switching back and forth between the two sequenses you'll see the frame change the width.

Btw in CS3 the 16:9 aspect is (1.422) in cs4 its (1.4587) so there is the problem I guess.
So I was right.. aspects did change over night, apparently Adobe thought it would be funny to make a fuzz.. NTSC aspects are different aswell (1,2121) for 16:9 and (0.9091) 4:3. What did I miss?

Which won't help much if the pixel count is off. ;-)

I'll do some NTSC testing. I have to admit to not pushing CS4 too much as I haven't had the time. It hasn't really looked that different.

Premiere's new offering mainly is AVCHD and some other refinements (more sequences and fewer restrictions on what can go on a timeline - which might be a curse instead of a blessing).

Mike

according to the Adobe forum and Pixel aspect ratio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The new aspects are more correct than what every NLE and DV camcorder is recording, and therefore CS4 has changed it. Great :(

Edit: If you type 702 horisontal instead of 720 when creating a sequence you are back to the old CS3 aspect.