'Vector' Distortions when exporting to widescreen in AE CS3

Question

Hi
I'm sure this is probably quite a simple issue, but i am new to AE and cannot find the answer to this anywhere. Basically i am exporting my compositions to use as widescreen for DVD. The exported video footage looks fine but any non-video elements used seem to 'quiver and shake' - examples of this are AE text, imported jpg logos and vector lines created and masked from within AE. I accidentally exported as best settings on one occasion rather than DV - this gave me a 'squarer' video file but it did render the  'distorting elements' perfectly.  This is also the case when i export as a flv. file - wrong proportions but quality render of the 'distorting elements'. As an aside, is it possible to export the composition as a widesceen flv file?
The settings i am using are detailed below (at default settings)
Render setting is DV settings and my chosen outpout module is Microsoft DV PAL 48khz, my composition settings are Preset: PAL D1/DV Widescreen (720 x 576)   PAR: D1/DV PAL Widesceen (1.42) and the Frame Aspect Ratio is 16:9.
As i said i am new to this so it well be that i am not using the best settings for this task.
Thanks in advance for any help that can be given, Tom

Answer 1

Your vector artwork from Illustrator should be interpreted as Square Pixels. It's highly unusual for Vector artwork to be anything else.
Anything you brought in from Photoshop or other image editing program should also be interpreted as Square Pixels unless you specifically created the artwork in Photoshop as non-square using one of the Photoshop Presets.
The composition you set up for rendering should be created using one of the presets. It looks like you're either using NTSC DV Widescreen or NTSC D1 Widescreen. Maybe you're in PAL land and using PAL D1/DV Widescreen. Make sure that you don't resize anything in the Output module.
In the composition window, if you have Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction turned on your footage will appear as it will when you look at on a TV. Nothing will be distorted, but there will be some ugly aliasing artifacts in the comp window because of the onscreen interpolation of the pixels. These artifacts will not show up in your render. If you don't like looking at the aliasing problems then you can turn off PARC in the Composition Panel and put up with the distorted (squeezed) image.
The way you keep things undistorted is to interpret the PAR of each asset in the Project Panel as it actually is and let AE do the PAR management. AE will usually guess correctly with footage (video). It may miss widescreen tags so you'll have to watch for that.
AE will always guess incorrectly for Illustrator or Photoshop artwork that should be square pixels but is created at a standard non-square image size. IOW, if you create artwork that is 720 X 480 pixels it will always be interpreted as NTSC DV pixels. The only time this is correct is when you intentionally create your artwork using this preset. I personally think that this seldom a good idea and only do this on rare occasions.
I hope this helps.