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AE on PC to FCP
Hi everyone,
I’ve searched the forums and the net but couldn’t find much so here is:
Our entire Graphics dept. runs AE on PCs. Post used to be linear and we’ve now moved it to FCP.
Whenever we need graphics with alpha we use Animation codec. We’re trying to figure out which codec is best for them to render when there is no alpha, as we’re trying to cut down import and rendering times.
Most of our SD stuff, unless graphics heavy, is edited in IMX 50 (we shoot xdcam and will move to xdcam hd in the future.
For obvious reasons we like Prores for graphics heavy stuff so the graphics don’t suffer too much.
What’s the optimal codec? Or is it better to export all tif image sequences?
thanks for your help
Patrice
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5 Replies
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IMX50 seems a strange choice of SD codec. Have you tried ProRes 422 in SD? That way your files and sequences will be ProRes – no render except for the animation codec graphics.
With FCP vers7 there is ProRes 4444 which has an alpha channel. Unfortunately I don’t know if that codec is available for a PC based AE setup but it would be ideal as the graphics file to match in with ProRes files and sequences.
Alternatively the graphics could be imported as a tiff sequence into Motion and exported as ProRes 4444. Animation codec is 8 bit as I understand it so if 10 resolution is required, the tiff sequence option would be better marginally better. Once the file is ProRes 4444 then no more rendering in the sequence.
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You can’t encode to ProRes on anything but a Mac with FCP installed, so I’d do what Dave suggests and go with Animation or png. You’ll just have to wait for it render when you take it back to your FCP system.
Write a note to Apple and request they release encode versions of ProRes for the PC. That would simplify your workflow immensely if they did that.
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Michael Hancock
http://www.oswaldcommunications.com -
Michael Hancock:
Write a note to Apple and request they release encode versions of ProRes for the PC.
What are the odds? Apple seems to prefer isolation.
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I don’t think they’ll ever release ProRes for encoding on a PC, but if enough people request it maybe a miracle will happen.
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Michael Hancock
http://www.oswaldcommunications.com -
Thank you everybody.
Forgive my ignorance but regarding some of your suggestions, I was under the impression that both PNG and Photo JPEG were not in the same color space as our XDCAM stuff? Part of the work the graphics dept does is based on shots they grab staight from the prodisc we give them…
I’ve thought about the tif sequence but that is a bit cumbersome… does fcp 7 treat that more flexibly than v.6?
Patrice
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