AE, FCP, & compression (for HD 15-min short animated film)

[Mardo El-noor]

i failed to mention that the ONLY uncompressed 1080X1920 full res render i can get from AE current settings is 9.2GB a minute… in AE, all shots have 10 to 50 photoshop layers, some HD video footage, & some have light effects…

Mardo El-Noor
Freelance Animator
auckland, New Zealand

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Mardo,
Sorry if I didn’t understood well the situation.
I guess, you are making some clips in a PC with AE (1920×10800 and you want to reedit them in Final Cut?
The best solution to go from a PC to Mac (or from Mac to PC) is “Sheer”. 8/10b Unc, YCrCb or RGB and with Alpha channel. All this with files much smaller than Apple Uncompress or Animation.

[Mardo El-noor] “where is the best place to apply compression???”
How do you intend to deliver your movie?

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.

[Mardo El-noor]

thanks for the reply, Rafael…

yes, it is indeed from PC to Mac… i have AE sessions with total of 150 composited shots of Photoshop layers & HD footage (that can only play by using a Neoplayer codec which is only available on PC, hence the use of PC!) i want to render all 1080X1920 shots & deliver them to a powerful machine & software like FCP to cut the whole movie…

& i intend to have the final cut delivered through Compressor for DVD, & as a full res 720 .mov file…

so, what is Sheer?

is it a codec or a software?? can it be used in AE?

where can i get it from??

are Sheer rendered lossless .mov files cross platform?

thanks very much indeed

Mardo El-Noor
Freelance Animator
auckland, New Zealand

[Rafael Amador]

Sheer is one of the few QT codecs compatible PC-Mac.
If you don’t want to buy Sheer, you can use AVID, BlackMagic or AJA codecs that you can download free from internet. You need to export from AE PC with one of those codecs. Then you need to have the same codecs installed in the Mac to open the files.
The advantage of Sheer is that, being loose-less, make smaller files. Another advantage is that you have always an Alpha channel available. This do not happens with the other codecs.
The point is that you use the same codec when exporting from AE than your time-line setting in FC, so you don’t need to re-render all the clips.
I’ve been reading a bit about the Neo4K codec. Seems really powerful but, I think, won’t make your editing in FC as easy as the others.
So export with any of those codecs in 10b Unc (you will get very big files in 1920×10800).
Edit in a 10b Unc sequence in FC (720) and don’t export. Send to Compressor from the FC time-line.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.

[Paolo Ciccone]

I second the suggestion about SheerVideo, it is my codec of choice for roundtripping when I don’t use something like Adobe’s Dynamic Link. Sheer is a codec for QuickTime. It works both on Macintosh and Windows. You can download the evaluation copy from https://www.bitjazz.com It doesn’t add any watermark, it just expires in 20 days.

—
Paolo Ciccone https://www.paolociccone.com
Hellriser Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Mardo El-noor]

thanks very much guys for the suggestions, will keep you posted on how it goes….

Mardo El-Noor
Freelance Animator
auckland, New Zealand