Hi there,

Make sure the little icon, second from the right in the row of buttons at the very top left, which says Set Project Aspect Ratio on rollover, is set to 16:9 (your desired aspect ratio) just before you open the Paint Designer…

Jirka

It is set to 16:9. I'm afraid you misunderstand the nature of the problem.

The problem is that PD12 is telling me...

'The imported template's aspect ratio is 4:3, while you're project's is 16:9. You must switch you project's aspect ratio to 4:3 to use this template."

I'm not using an imported template. I don't even know what PD12 is referring to by imported template -- either in the context of the project, or in the context of Paint Director.

Just as a test, I opening a new, empty project with aspect ratio 16:9. I got to Paint Director and attempt to create the drawing animation. I get the same error.

Hi jimbojr -

I've had that same alert pop up when saving a paint animation. It's stupid and wrong! Just ignore it! Just click save and it will appear in your 16:9 (not 4:3) library.

When you make a new paint animation you are making a template (like all the other PiP objects). That's the template the silly alert is referring to.

Cheers - Tony
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[SOLVED]

Thanks for the reply Tony.

I just stumbled on the solution. The error message is misleading because it's incorrect.

When I was creating my custom animation, I had the "Downloaded" PiP effects tag selected.

Well, turns out I don't have any downloaded PiP effects. And, PD12 thought I was trying to use a downloaded effect (aka imported template) despite the obvious selection to create a new hand drawn animation in the Paint Designer. It didn't matter what aspect ratio I had set. PD would throw the error. If my project was 16:9, it would say the imported template was 4:3. If my project was 4:3, it would say the imported template was 16:9. In either scenario PD was requiring me to change the project's aspect ratio. At least that's what the error message led me to believe.

What I needed to do was select the "Custom" tag before clicking on the pencil icon to create the hand drawn animation. Hand drawn animation using Paint Director are considered *Custom*, and that tag must be selected. Actually, I went ahead and tested creating a hand drawn animation object with all the other default tags and it works just fine. Only when the *Downloaded* PiP tag is selected did I get the error.

As you said, the template is created and stored under the custom tag, but that error message sure is confusing, and annoying. I wasted waaaay too much time trying to figure out what was wrong.

Is this a bug? I could sure make the argument that it is. A more user friendly response would be to either: 1. say that you must select any other tag in PiP designer besides the Download tag, or 2. Just have PD automatically switch to the custom tag where the custom template is saved anyway (my choice).

So if you Cyberlink folks are reading this, please add that to your punch list of annoyances to fix please.

I didn't really go through the process but I observed that the thumbnails of PiP templates available all change aspect ratio on changing the setting I mentioned…