PAL Widescreen format between photoshop and After Effects

Question

Hi, I wonder if someone else has bumped into the problem I have and has a solution. I am working with Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere Pro(all CS3 levels) to create a project using still and moving images. I am using PAL widescreen (16:9) format for the first time so have cropped my still images in Photoshop to 1024 x 576 pixels. Starting a new project in After Effects I chose PAL/Widescreen and set the resolution to 1024x576. When I bring in my images and drop them to the timeline they have the same height as the AE screen but are significantly shorter than the displayed 1024 pixel size. If I drop the images into Premiere they will size to 1024 x 576. Am I doing something drastically wrong here ?

Answer 1

Just to add to this, I am confused over exactly what is happening inside
After Effects with regard to interpreting PAL footage!
When you go to the Compositions Settings dialogue box there are two Presets
on the drop down list for non-square pixels; PAL D1/DV and PAL D1/DV
Widescreen.
Both comps are 720 x 576 pixels.
However when you go to the drop down list for Pixel Aspect Ratio the two
options there for non-square pixels are PAL D1/DV (1.09) and PAL D1/DV
Widescreen (1.46)
According to my calculations:
PAL 4:3 in square pixels = 768 x 576 (768 / 4 * 3 = 576)
Doing the maths the Pixel Aspect Ratio rounds up to 1.07 not 1.09
768 / 720 = 1.06666666667
PAL 16:9 in square pixels = 1024 x 576 (1024 /16 * 9 = 576)
Again doing the maths the Pixel Aspect Ratio rounds up to 1.42 not 1.46
1024 / 720 = 1.42222222222
If the Pixel Aspect Ratios given are correct then the Width of both
Compositions should be 704 not 720!
768 / 704 = 1.0909090909 which rounds up to 1.09
1024 / 704 = 1.454545454545 which rounds up to 1.46
Using the preset comp Width with the preset Pixel Aspect Ratios doesn't seem
to add up or am I missing something fundamental here?
Perhaps I should just import the footage using whatever Pixel Aspect Ratio
into a PAL comp with square pixels and then just use the fit to comp command
to make sure it really does fit!
John (aka Jack)