Please Help, After Effects problem!
 

Hey, maybe i'm just setting something wrong, i have no idea how to use After Effects and well, i got as far as creating a composition and importing files, but the thing is my window(monitor, if you will) is not displayed as 4:3, it looks more like 5:3 and it's stretching my footage, why is this happening and how do i set it right?? I selected dv 720x480 and i cant seem to figure this out.

hope someone can tell me what to do, thanks!

Look in your composition settings to see if the pixel aspect is set to square or DV NTSC.

Square is for computer graphics and some high def. NTSC is of course for standard def television. My guess is it's set to square and that's giving you a problem.

Since 4:3 DV has a pixel aspect ratio of 0.9, if it is displayed in square pixel (PAR=1.0), it will look slightly stretched horizontally as you described. That could either happen by the footage being incorrectly interpreted by AE as Joe suggested (check "interpret footage") or by a composition window setting.

If the footage is correctly interpreted, maybe it is just a composition window display issue. I'm not on my editing box right now so can't describe it any better, but by default AE does NOT display pixel aspect ratio correction, in order to improve performance. One of the little buttons at the bottom of the comp window toggles this on and off. Find that button and give it a try. The opposite can occur with widescreen footage, in which a 1.2 PAR gets displayed as only 1.0 wide.

thanks guys. it turns out it was that little button at the bottom of the window. a little more experimenting and i would have found it eventually, but thanks, heh.