Moho Forum

I'm hoping someone can help me with a query about Moho...

In the past I've made anims for TV in Flash for Pal widescreen (1050x576) and then encoded them as AVIs with an Avid codec, squashing them to 720x576 pixels.

I'm considering buying Moho as it looks much more versatile for doing the kind of stuff I want to do, but as is discussed in the FAQs, the software can't change the shape of the pixels when exporting movies:

Quoting the FAQs here:

"What you need to do is export your movies using square pixels, and then convert them to rectangular before putting them on video tape or DVD. The conversion process is usually painless - whatever video editor or DVD-creation program you use will typically handle the conversion automatically."

I was wondering if someone can expand on this, as with Flash all I need is the software and the Avid codec (no video editor or DVD creation software).

I basically want to end up with my animations as an 720x576 Avid-encoded AVI file which I can then pass onto an Avid editor on a CD. Can anyone recommend any specific software or hardware that can convert, say a 1050x576 uncompressed AVI to this format?

I've heard about batch resizing .bmp files being one option, but I don't know how I'd go about reconverting these resized stills into an Avid AVI.

I'd like to start using Moho to make anims, but I'm a bit stuck unless I can sort out this problem! Any help would be much appreciated...

I'm hoping someone with more experience will chime in - until then you get my hobbyist views.

dhooper78 wrote:In the past I've made anims for TV in Flash for Pal widescreen (1050x576) and then encoded them as AVIs with an Avid codec, squashing them to 720x576 pixels.

Was squashing them an option in Flash or in the AVI codec itself? Sorry, I haven't used either, but I have seen an unrelated codec that did resizing on output. Resizing in the codec would carry across to any video editor (or directly from Moho).

I've seen resizing mentioned for Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere (6.5 onwards), Adobe After Effects, and Eyeon Digital Fusion, but I'm sure other professional video editors must also support it (possibly even some consumer-level ones - I'll check out Vegas little sibling, Vegas Movie Studio, and let you know in a follow-up posting).
(Your Avid editor should be able to do it too - you could possibly just hand them the 1050x576 file.)

I've even seen resizing instructions for the freeware AviSynth/VirtualDubMod combination - a couple of lines of low-level scripting required rather than the point-and-click approach of commercial programs, but not particularly difficult (basically one line to specify which file to resize, and another to specify which resizing algorithm to use).

The output video will probably look squashed on the PC, depending on the codec, what program you use to play it back, and what are the settings/options in this program.
There may be an option in the video editor to view at output device aspect ratio, or something like that - at least one video editor supports this option, but I can't remember which one at the moment.

As for the Avid codec, as long as it is installed on your system, you should be able to pick it from the codec list at output (either from Moho or from your video editor).

Regards, Myles.

DivX Pro ($19.99) has the ability to resize during encoding, though I've never tried using that feature, so can't say how well it works.

MS Windows Media Encoder 9 (free) will convert an existing, uncompressed file. I have used this, and it does an excellent job, but only outputs to .wmv.

Thanks for the replies - it looks like editing software may be the answer then. I've since had a chance to experiment with Adobe Premiere and it seems to resize stuff pretty well.

The option to resize is part of Flash and comes up in the export window. It's not connected with the Avid codec specifically. I notice that the Avid codec only seems to work if rendering to it as 720x576, so it looks like I'll have to get editing software involved too if I want to do widescreen stuff in Moho and then convert it successfully to Avid.