Best codec to do animations in

[Walter Biscardi]

[joseph wilkins] “suggestions?”

Render to the same codec you’re editing with. Anything else, FCP will re-render the files into the codec and then you’re double rendering.

If you work in the native codec in AE, then you can see if there are any issues with movements, etc… BEFORE you get into FCP.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

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[Joseph Wilkins]

How do I know what codec that is>?

[Chris Borjis]

If you want lossless with small file sizes for no additional cost then the PNG codec is what you should use.

It does take a longer to render though.

[Marco Solorio]

[walter biscardi] “Render to the same codec you’re editing with. Anything else, FCP will re-render the files into the codec and then you’re double rendering.”

This is very good information to stick with. However, if you know you’re going to further render the animation in the FCP timeline (say you created a generic motion background and you’ll add additional layers in FCP) then you could stick with a 4:4:4 RGB lossless animation file. Since FCP has to re-render it anyway, you get a cleaner render since the animation is lossless as opposed to a 4:2:2 file with chroma filtering stacking.

If you do want to stick with a 4:4:4 RGB file, then Animation codec is probably your best best. There’s also the Sheer Video codec from BitJazz. It cuts the file size by about half and is very fast to work with. They have a free demo you can try out.

Marco Solorio

[Rafael Amador]

I think like Marcos. If your time-line, back in FC, is HD the best you can export from AE is a Sheers YCbCr 444{4}. And half the file size.
Rafael

[Tom Brooks]

Is there a down side to the PNG suggestion?

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Tom,
PNG is a great codec, but if I have to bring my movie from AE to a YCbCr sequence in FC, I preffer to export from AE in that color space. When I have to put few things from AE toguether, I export from AE with Sheer and I set my sequence in FC with Sheer for mastering. Very little to render and you get a 10b Unc .mov in a very light file.
rafael

[Tom Brooks]

Rafael,
Do I understand correctly that you set up your sequence in FCP with Sheer as the codec in the Quicktime Video Setting? Or is your sequence 10b uncompressed and you render the Sheer encoded clips on the timeline?
Thanks.
-Tom

[Rafael Amador]

Tom,
I set my sequence setting with Sheer so what I got from AE it doesn’t need to be rendered.
If you got a KONA or BMD you can capture directly with Sheer. When you install it you got all the “Easy set-ups” for FC. So you can do all the process from capturing untill the mastering with this codec. Even if I do the editing with the Appel, the movie I keep for archiving I keep it in Sheer because it takes the half of the space in the disk.
You get in the same package 8/10b Unc YcbCr 422{4}/444{4} and also RGB 8/10b 444{4}. For every need. All with Alpha available.
For CGI the only QT codec that offer superior performance is the Microcosm for his 64 bit-depth.
Cheers,
rafael

[Chris Borjis]

Wow really?!?

Is there a shear easy setup?

can it playback in realtime?

Are shear file sizes larger or smaller than ProRes?

I had no idea it was THAT versatile a codec.

I don’t know why Animation would be recommended over PNG.
To my eyes they look exactly the same only the PNG is much
smaller and takes a little longer to export. Microcosm is
a 64-bit PNG based codec if I’m not mistaken.