AE to FCP ProRes HQ export settings.

[Kevin Monahan]

Hopefully this doc will steer you in the right direction: https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2009/03/prores-422-colors-in-after-eff.html

Kevin Monahan
Sr. Content and Community Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
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Posts by kev_mon

[Walter Soyka]

You can’t encode ProRes on a Windows machine — you can only decode it. What format are you encoding to? How are you monitoring the gamma shift?

I’ve noticed gamma shifts when rendering to Quicktime Animation codec that can be easily resolved in FCP. After importing the item, select it in the browser, hit Cmd-9 to pull up item properties, right-click on the gamma value (defaults to Source) and select 2.20.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Anthony Smith]

Hi Kevin,

this is one of the docs i’d already consulted in my attempts to resolve the issue. Nevertheless thanks for your time and attention, all help is greatly appreciated.

best,

Anthony.

[Anthony Smith]

Hi Walter,

I think you might have identified the gaps in my knowledge here, from what you’ve said it seems that basically i’m trying to do something that can’t be done. It seems you’ve also offered a good solution too :o)

I had been encoding back to quicktime and trying to keep the settings as high quality as possible. Needless to say i’m fairly new to industry workflows and facing the universe of potential rendering options available within AE, decided the simplest answer was potentially the best one and therefore give the file back with the .mov tag it came with.

Thanks for the info, I’ll know not to spend hours exploring AE seeking out which rendering permutation in enables ProRes HQ in one of the various menus. :o)

Best,

Anthony.

[Anthony Smith]

Hi Dave,

ok, time for me to do the explaining methinks:

The file came/was rendered out on a Mac running FCP7 – i’m pretty sure it is indeed ProRes HQ. I think the confusion has arisen because as Walter identified above (as has your goodself too) that basically I’m trying to do something that can’t be done: render ProRes on windows. It had been suggested to me that there was a solution to the problem though that would smooth out our pipeline, I assumed it was me to render in the correct format. Perhaps there is an accepted workaround but it seems that it may lay more with tweaking the file’s gamma back on the Mac.

It all seems so obvious now. Doh!

Thank you all the same, it’s great to have had three useful replies in less than 24 hours. Thank you :o)

Best

Anthony.

[Anthony Smith]

hi Dave,

looks like there’s some forum tag going on here.

Ok firstly: – no hacking involved – don’t believe in it or anything like it, no over-clocking, no messing around in the bios, everything is intel, Quadro FX cards as per Adobe’s requirements. I like my machine and software just the way it was made, clean and simple so everything runs nicely, I never get hardware or software problems, becasue I don’t screw with things I don’t understand. Except Rendering – arguably ;o)

Anyway I’m interested that you say that:
‘there’s no way your Windows machine could even READ ProRes HQ video’
I too wasn’t convinced that AE actually had identified the file as ProRes HQ despite me amending the Interpretation Rules File as per Adobe’s suggestion. Having done this, perhaps my understanding of what it is I have done (in amending the IRF) is actually inncorrect, which it very well could be (see the link in the above post for the Adobe recommendation – i think you’re probably familiar with it anyway.)

The file itself came with a .mov tag – this I know could be one of several thousand different file permutations that can be packaged as .mov – this is the instruction that the editor gave me in an email:
‘OK – so you need to set After Effects to use HDTV (Rec 709) working colour space and it’s probably worth using 16 bpc as ProRes (HQ) is 10 bpc.’

I have to say though that the file worked straight away when imported into the project, AE did default to sRGB colour space but it basically worked fine.

Certainly the editor is editing online with FCP7 in ProRes HQ and told me verbally I will be working in ProRes, the above email states ProRes HQ – not sure what to say beyond that. I’ve been carrying out a repair on some of the footage so I assume he has given me a file of equivalent quality to that which he is using. It may not actually be ProRes HQ but for the purpose of the job it must be of a very similar quality.

Clearly this is a bit of a mystery – I’m sure there is a very simple solution that can be accounted for through my inexperience, that said if you’re intrigued, is there some kind of data I can post to help perhaps resolve the mystery of the codec?

Many thanks again,

Anthony.

[Anthony Smith]

hi Dave,

thanks for that, I juts emailed the editor and he confirms it was a ProRes 442 HQ file he gave me so AE can read it, but certainly not write it.

Have forwarded on the Image Sequence suggestion for consideration.

Would be good to see if Walter can foresee any potential issues – with the suggested method – such as loss of quality?

best & thanks again

Anthony.

[Walter Soyka]

[Anthony Smith] “Anyway I’m interested that you say that:
‘there’s no way your Windows machine could even READ ProRes HQ video'”

I think the ProRes decoder included with recent versions of Quicktime decodes ProRes HQ.

[Anthony Smith] “‘OK – so you need to set After Effects to use HDTV (Rec 709) working colour space and it’s probably worth using 16 bpc as ProRes (HQ) is 10 bpc.’ “

Here’s where it gets tricky. What codec are you rendering to? QT Animation is only 8-bit. If you need to return 10-bit video, then you’ll have to use something else. You might be able to use either Avid’s DNxHD codec or AJA or BMD’s Uncompressed 10-bit codec (with your project set to at least 16 bit and rendering with Trillions of Colors), but your editor will also have to install the codec on his or her machine.

Image sequences could also work (again, 16-bit project and Trillions of Colors rendering), but it will make extra work for your editor to stitch them back together into a movie before he could use them with FCP.

If it’s ok to return 8-bit video, then you’re all right as you are.

For whatever it’s worth, I wish Apple would sell a cross-platform ProRes encoder, independent of Final Cut Studio. It’s a great codec, and it’s got a lot of industry support, but the cross-platform situation is frustrating.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[Dave LaRonde] “ProRes HQ is only available on Macs running FCP 7. You’ve got a Windows machine that can’t run FCP 7.”

Dave, I can confirm that the latest version of Quicktime on Windows reads ProRes HQ (and ProRes 4444, though I haven’t tested it with an alpha channel).

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Anthony Smith]

That’s good news, we live and learn.

Best,

Anthony.