AE to FCP

Adobe After Effects

AE to FCP

Posted by Raymond Tuquero on July 3, 2007 at 8:31 pm

I didnt know who I can address…so I will address both forums for AE and FCP

So, I have upgraded to FCP 6.0.1 and have a well finished project, but all of my AE exports will not play. The system is telling me that the clips have encountered drop frames and must either be changed or rerendered.

Any thoughts any one. I have matched the settings between my FCP timeline and the AE export and the stupid machine still tells me that. I have called support and they do not know what the crap is happening, I have even sent them a snippet of an AE render and it still does not want to play for them.

I am creating an HDV timeline with 1440×1080 at HDV 1080i60 Compressor. Same settings for the AE render out. at 29.97 fps on both.

ANY THOUGHTS or issues with AE7 working with the new FCP 2 (6.0.1) that anyone one knows?

Thanks
-Raymond Tuquero-
Houston Editor

Raymond Tuquero replied 18 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
3 Replies

Darby Edelen
July 4, 2007 at 12:00 am

My only thought is that you shouldn’t be working with HDV in AE, and you probably shouldn’t be rendering out to HDV (although that’s probably less of a problem).

AE doesn’t like codecs with temporal compression. HDV uses the MPEG-2 codec, and if you’ve ever tried to deal with MPEG-2 in AE before you know it’s like watching molasses make a run for it down the inside of your freezer.

The problem is that, generally, only 1 in every 15 frames (this varies) actually contains a full frame of video, the frames that follow that frame contain only the changes in the video from the last frame.

I recommend using a codec that has no temporal interpolation. There are a few to choose from, but I like Photo JPEG as it renders very quickly in AE and takes up less space than a lossless file.

When you render out I recommend using a lossless codec.

A couple of follow up questions, do you experience the problematic playback when viewing in FCP? Does the footage need to be rendered on the FCP timeline? What about QT Player?

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA
Steve Roberts
July 4, 2007 at 10:43 am

I second that. HDV is an *acquisition* codec, designed to squeeze a large image onto DV tape. Using it for editing or compositing is a mistake.

Once you get your clips into your system, convert them to something like Photo-JPEG (as Darby recommended) before doing any work with them in any app.
Raymond Tuquero
July 5, 2007 at 4:11 pm

Thanks guys, I didnt think about changing the HDV to something else. I will definitely try that.

Now the answer to your questions Darby:
1) Yes I have problems playing them in FCP they say that the footage has encountered a drop frame and must be set to the correct frame rate. Which it is.
2) No the footage doesnt need to be rendered, FCP actually sees it as a perfectly fine graphic for my timeline. No render needed.
3) My QT actually plays the graphic just fine with no hiccups and at the HD resolution. Pretty nice in QT.

Now, I am still having problems with it, But I decided since my clients are getting SD DVDs anyway and I converting my edits to SD size, I have exported the graphics to the SD compression. They now work awesome like that in FCP 6. But hope fully in the future Apple will update any issues like this one.

Thanks guys,
-Raymond Tuquero-
Houston Editor

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