Have you started your project with a preset in ‘Film & Video’ and got all confused?
Here’s how to configure your document back to the ‘original’ state that you have always been working with:
1. Remove the Second Artboard
Go to the Artboards panel, select the second artboard (Artboard 2) and click the bin icon. This will remove the giant size artboard that you don’t need, which covers almost the whole canvas (14,400 x 14,400 pixels to be exact).
This giant artboard is essential when importing an Adobe Illustrator document to Adobe After Effects, so that artworks outside the canvas won’t be cropped away.
2. Hide Transparency Grid
The next step is to hide the checker pattern in the background (aka. transparency grid).
Click on View > Hide Transparency Grid, and there you go, a white background that you’d usually see!
3. Hide Video Rulers
Next, click on Views > Rulers > Hide Video Rulers. This will hide the green rulers around your artboard.
The green frames, though, are still visible. Let’s hide them too in the next step.
4. Hide Artboard Guides
Now, go back to the Artboards panel. With ‘Artboard 1’ selected, click the menu icon at the top right corner, and click ‘Artboard Options…’
You could also access the Artboard Options dialog in the Controls bar when you’re using the Artboard Tool.
Finally, uncheck all the options in the ‘Display’ section:
If you would like to tweak it to the very default settings, you could also change the ‘Video Ruler Pixel Aspect Ratio’ to 1. This option is to set the pixel aspect ratio, as some older video formats tend to stretch the video a little bit.
That’s it!
Do note that the document is currently in RGB mode, which is only suitable for on-screen display. If you would like it to be optimised for printing, be sure to change the color mode by clicking File > Document Color Mode > CMYK Color.
Yum-seng!