Rectangular Pixels in After Effects
Dealing with footage conversion in digital video

by Brian Maffitt
Total Training

With the advent of digital video, there's one concept desktop video artists have had to come to terms with: rectangular pixels. Television's actual resolution is 720 pixels by 486 pixels, which doesn't exactly equate with the 4:3 aspect ratio of a TV screen. The end result is rectangular pixels, slightly taller than they are wide. In this clip from Total AE, instructor Brian Maffitt demonstrates the ins and outs of dealing with rectangular and square pixels using After Effects. This is a complex concept, but you are presented with a a thorough, easy to understand explanation of the inherent issues. The tutorial ends by showing the ideal resolution for working in DV and demonstrates how to make your comps and artwork automatically snap to this resolution. Click screenshot below to begin video tutorial.