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AE integration with FCP
So I posted a topic not long ago regarding problems with my export problems with a HDV project. I thought I would try and phrase it better for more constructive feedback.
I have footage shot in HDV, part of which I will be bringing into After Effects for composting. I have graphics created in Illustrator which will be used with the keyed-out HDV footage.
Everything will be edited together in an HDV timeline within FCP.
Are there any recommendations/pitfalls I should know of going into this project? I actually have everything already thrown together and it looks fine until I export it. When the sequence is set to the HDV default settings, any quicktime I export for the web has jagged graphics. When the sequence is set to the Animation default settings, the graphics look great and the footage looks terrible.
Gaaaaaaghhhh!!!!
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7 Replies
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Pick up the Automatic Duck Importer for AE and you don’t have to export anything. You send your entire timeline, intact and with all handles, into AE for compositing.
HDV is heavily compressed which is why most of us get out of that codec for editing. I convert all HDV material to Apple ProRes during ingest via the AJA Kona 3 board. Then I’m editing in full raster 1080i frame size and then when I work in AE, I get much cleaner composites than if I tried to work with HDV.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
Credits include multiple Emmy, Telly, Aurora and Peabody Awards.
Owner, Biscardi Creative Media featuring HD Post
Biscardi Creative MediaCreative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
I agree with Walter. I’d avoid editing in HDV and use ProRes. Also automatic duck is great. I use it almost daily. Also don’t forget to make your client quack like a duck once once you import the xml into AE.
-mattyc -
hi Rich
auto-duck is a fine and very useful tool…
which comes with a price tag of about 400$
before you try it
check this one out, its completely free 🙂https://www.popcornisland.com/after-effects/final-cut-2-after-effects/
its a plugin/script that allows you to seamlessly send timelines to AE.
i have worked with it many times and can testify on its behalf.
definitely one of the best free tools around
about the HDV… backing what Walter and Matt wrote…
capture HDV to ProRes (or transcode if you must) and never look back.
all the best
Hector Berrebi
Schibber Group
prePost Consulting -
How does AE perform with ProRes compared to Animation footage?
Working with Uncompressed 8 or 10-bit is very inefficient. Also, I thought Automatic duck would be an “awesome” tool for us but I constantly run it to issues with it since it only links to the original media. IF ProRes is as efficient as Animation to work with in AE it might be a solution for me now actually, otherwise I’m stuck with my manual exporting “hell”.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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[Erik Lindahl] “How does AE perform with ProRes compared to Animation footage?
Working with Uncompressed 8 or 10-bit is very inefficient”This depends on your editing system. I don’t see any issues when we work with 8 or 10bit material here, but we’re running Mac Pros with lots of ram and very fast media arrays. ProRes is a much lighter data stream than animation, so I guess it would work a bit faster. We interchange the formats all the time and I never notice AE running faster or slower with any particular format.
[Erik Lindahl] “Also, I thought Automatic duck would be an “awesome” tool for us but I constantly run it to issues with it since it only links to the original media. “
Well, yeah, that’s what it’s designed to do so you get all the original handles too. What are you expecting it to do? Can’t say we’ve ever had an issue with it here.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
Credits include multiple Emmy, Telly, Aurora and Peabody Awards.
Owner, Biscardi Creative Media featuring HD Post
Biscardi Creative MediaCreative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
Codecs and why Automatic Duck isn’t for everyone
Right… Try a comp with 8-bit, 10-bit and animation as your original media. It will render ALOT faster with animation as your base codec. I haven’t done any resent tests but I’d imagine a 2X speed increase with animation still. That’s the first problem. And I notice this even on an 8-core MacPro with 16GB of RAM and an 8-disk RAID 5 array esp. when moving to larger HD projects. The second one lays in the gamma-rendering issues that can occur depending on how you’ve set up your system. But going Uncompressed > Animation > Uncompressed always works and renders perfectly.The above are two reason why Automatic Duck isn’t always THE solution. On complex projects you’ll lose time due to the simple fact rendering is bogged down from going with another codec than animation. I think the main issue of rendering slowing down is there is the YUV to RGB conversion, but I can’t say for sure. This is also why I sort of get my hopes up with the ProRes 4444 RGB codec…
The second part is depending on what you do it what stage of your post-production. Since Automatic Duck links to your original media, any effects of filters applied in FCP don’t follow through hence you still have to patch and stich media when going the Automatic Duck route IF you do stuff like Color Correction in Final Cut Pro.
Just making people clear of the downsides of a tool like Automatic Duck. For some it might be The Tool, I thought it would be for me (we even bought it). But the above limitations makes it tricky for me to use often and it hasn’t even been installed on our latest system. For us, most effects we do are on a “per clip” basis and the clip often travels from FCP, might get a CC, to After Effects and into Mocha for tracking and rotoscoping and later back to FCP. Here, again, the “complete original media route” isn’t always the way to go either.
If there was a way to “round-trip” things like CC would still work but as far as I know there isn’t one.
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Communication
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Most of this stuff is over my head, I guess I just don’t understand how this all works together. I’ll take a look at Automatic Duck and ProRes, but I just don’t have access to a Kona card or anything like that, so that will probably limit what I can do.
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