• Adobe After Effects

  Importing/Exporting Final Cut to After Effects CS3

  Posted by Jon Rokka on September 12, 2007 at 5:06 pm

  Hi
  Im new here but I have a problem which is causing me hours of grief.
  I am currently working on a project which involves exporting both still images and video from Final Cut and then working on them in After effects CS3 and then sending them back into Final Cut for the finished film. Sounds simple enough.
  My 2 issues are:

  1. when I export files as a quicktime movie with no compression from final cut and then import them to After effects cs3 as footage, then work on the footage.
  When I re-export as best quality QT fro AE I lose quality of footage???
  The new effected video is lower quality than the original footage I export from FCP!
  I have tried changing settings galor but to no avail!

  2. When I export still images from FCP to after effects I am exporting JPEG at highest quality and I am still losing quality when I re-export them from AE CS3

  If anyone can provide a surefire way of maintaning quality throughout this process I will be a ridiculously happy man.

  Thank you

  John

  Todd Kopriva replied 18 years, 8 months ago 5 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Jason Jenkins

  September 12, 2007 at 5:49 pm

  Sounds like you need:

  https://www.automaticduck.com/products/piae/
• 

  Darby Edelen

  September 12, 2007 at 8:15 pm

  Are you exporting “with QuickTime Conversion” or just “Export QuickTime”?

  You almost never want to use QuickTime Conversion…

  Darby Edelen
  DVD Menu Artist
  Left Coast Digital
  Aptos, CA
• 

  Dan O’brien

  September 13, 2007 at 12:17 am

  With your video, try exporting using a quicktime reference (uncheck the “make movie self-contained” boxin the export quicktime movie dialog). This will export a reference quicktime that uses your original finalcut footage. Also, what’s your fcp video (dv, 10-bit, 8-bit?) make sure you’re rendering out of AE with the correct settings. Is your final cut footage lowerfield? Then render out of AE with lower field (not single field).

  This is not an unusual workflow, so you should have no problems. Just make sure your render settings in AE match your original footage from FCP.

  Dan

  PrEditors.net
• 

  Todd Kopriva

  September 13, 2007 at 6:56 am

  You say that you’re exporting with Best Quality settings, but you don’t say what codec you’re using. Be sure that you’re using a lossless codec for compression for both output from FCP and After Effects. Exporting a Quicktime movie from After Effects using the Animation codec is a very common way of maintaining quality in this workflow.

  JPEG is a lossy codec, by the way.

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up