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AfterFX and HDV
I’ve been using AFterFX and Vegas with DV/AVI files for some years now without problems. Now HDV is different, I cannot seem to be able to import the righ type of file back into Vegas without losing quality. Also everything in Vegas plays in real time but once exported out of After FX in needs rendering. Does anyone know what the right settings are to export HDV out of After FX back into Vegas? Going bald scratching my head so much!
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3 Replies
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After Effects always has to render. Thats’ the price of being format-independent.
That said, AE hates HDV, MPEG-2 and all formats that use interframe compression. These formats must be converted to another codec (Quicktime Animation, Photo-JPEG, 8-bit Uncompressed) before being imported into AE. Consider doing that in Quicktime Player, or try this: https://www.dvdxdv.com/hdvxdv.html . I’ve heard good things about it.
All that means that you cannot use HDV and AE without recompressing at some point. Hopefully converting to Animation will minimize quality loss.
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HDV uses temporal compression, this means that you cannot write HDV back from your NLE or AE without recompressing it, even if you haven’t done anything more than a straight cut. You can work with HDV in AE, it’s not optimal but it can be done. When you need to export to another application use a different codec in order to preserve color information. You can use any of the lossless built-in codecs available in QT (PNG, Animation, Uncompressed, TIFF) or employ the excellent SheerVideo (https://www.bitjazz.com). Also, and I don’t know if this works because I don’t know Vegas, you can export to a sequence of TIFF from AE, usually the preferred method to exchange clips. If Vegas can import image sequences this method will likely give you the best result. The advantage is that you can re-render portions of your comp without re-render it completely and it also allows you to use the network renderer.
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Paolo Ciccone https://www.paolociccone.com
Hellriser Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Hi —
Similarly, I am attempting to remap some stop motion animation that was shot on 35mm, transferred to HDCAM, digitized to uncompressed 8-bit HD.
The only After Effects render that seems to maintain the quality of the original HD file is the Animation Codec.
Does this sound right? Is that the best I can do? How does the Animation Codec compare with Uncompressed 8-bit HD? I’m just wondering if I should simply (well not really so) ‘remap’ it, via cuts, in FCP?
Thanks if you can help,
Jodie
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