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Animation/ProRes Codec Confusion
Hi,
I do alot of work that involves mixing dvd footage, captured dv material and motion graphics stuff from After Effects and stills all oN the same FCP timeline.I have always exported my AE stuff as Animation, then worked with that and my DV capture (captured as 8bit DV) in a seq set to 8 bit uncompressed, which just about handles both formats without the “red line” above the timeline.
I am hearing more and more about ProRes, just wanted to find out if everybody else is using this except me!
Another thing I recently worked on x6 4min animations these were 1024×576 sq pixel and exported as qT animation.
I bought them into FCP to do some patching/audio and so on, I custom changed my seq to match (using same animation codec) – but exporting these from FCP took ages, let alone x6 of them!! these then had to be encoded to .wmv as client is on PC using powerpoint… (grr) and then uploaded etc etc.All in all my production time was way too slow…
Should I be exporting from AE as ProRes? would this speed things up?
Any help on this confusion greatly appreciated.
Eugene
(sorry – bit long winded)
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4 Replies
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[Eugene Constable] “I am hearing more and more about ProRes, just wanted to find out if everybody else is using this except me! “
Eugene,
You know in fashion you often hear things such as, “red is the new black,” well Pro Res is the new uncompressed, even though it is compressed. The bottom line is, the sweet spot or holy grail of video editing is a codec that is does it all, but at reasonable file sizes that don’t require a very powerful raid for playback and capture without dropped frames. ProRes is Apple’s solution. It not only looks great and is relatively small in terms of file size, especially when compared to uncompressed, but it’s also 10-bit, making it even better.
So, you should definitely be using it.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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And adding to Dave’s comments…for a long time ProRes was limited by not being able to carry an alpha channel. I was using Red Giant’s microcosm codec. Others would use Animation. Well, with the advent of FCS3 they unveiled a new ProRes 4444 codec which is now ProRes with an alpha…in my opinion, that codec is an absolute reason to upgrade…you can now have real-time keys of AE renders…I don’t think that was possible in Final Cut before this codec.
-Jason
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That is cool. Thanks to you both.
I’ll try exporting from AE using ProRes, hopefully it is as sharp as animation codec, and will run smoothly in realtime in FCP.. and not have huge file size.
(is there any advice here on settings within ProRes to watch out for?)Also will have to persuade powers that be to upgrade to FCP3, the ProRes 4444 sounds great!
For anyone reading I found this from Ken stone on the subject of codecs in FCP quite useful:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/when_to_stay_native.html
Thanks!!
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There are other added improvements in FCS3…markers in FCP are much better…
I only worked on 6.5 for a month or two before 7 came out, so I was a lucky one!
As far as settings in AE, I don’t tweak much…your composition settings need to match your sequence settings, and ProRes just seems to carry them over. I don’t change settings within the codec ever.
One thing to look out for, a well discussed topic here on the Cow is when working in 24p…AE uses the correct 23.976, whereas FCP truncates it to 23.98…rendering to 23.98 in AE will cause problems in FCP.
-Jason
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