-
DV cam to Final Cut to After Effects workflow questions
Hey guys, I’m a designer who’s getting more into video and I’ve got my first “real” video project at work, we’re shooting on greenscreen and keying it in After Effects, then exporting that to an FLV file for use with a Flash movie. What I’ve been doing is importing via Firewire from the camera (Panasonic AG-DVC30P) to Final Cut Express, then exporting a DV stream from there to After Effects, then again exporting to a DV stream from AE to Sorenson Squeeze to create my final FLV file. My dv footage is rather pixely though, and I notice that a Quicktime export looks immensely cleaner when I export from Final Cut.
I get the feeling I’m using the wrong formats here, any advice on my best bet for getting the best quality footage from Final Cut into After Effects and from there into Sorenson? Thanks.
chris
i’m not random i’m tangent oriented…
-
4 Replies
-
Capture the file with final cut. You don’t have to export anything. Simply go to the capture scratch folder (where FCP saved the file obviously) and drag that file into the AE project window. I wouldn’t be messing with DV streams.
If it’s better for organizational purposes to export a portion of the clip from Final Cut, then just export Quicktime movie. It’ll be a reference movie referencing the original media, OR you can check the box that says make self contained and it’ll simply be a copy of the clip you captured, or a copy of the portion you chose to export. Either way make sure your settings are “current settings.”
DV is not an optimal medium for green screen btw, because so much of the compression is in the color info, not the luma info. If you’re planning on doing a lot of this all the time, you’d be better off investing in an uncompressed solution and shooting on something other than DV. Like Digibeta or Betacam.
-
Thanks Bret, one minor problem though, and that is that I’m capturing on my mac and keying on a pc, no firewire card on the pc. I tried exporting to quicktime and that did seem to work well, good suggestion.
This isn’t a big budget kinda project so definitely not going to be investing in digibeta or anything that cool, just doing some pretty straightforward video for the web right now. I have read a lot about keying dv and it’s challenges, been using an older version of dvMatte from dvGarage and it’s done a really great job so far. Tried with Keylight as well and dvMatte definitely did a better job with the dv footage.
Thanks for the help, appreciate it.
chris
-
Still no need to export if you don’t want. Just copy the file from the capture scratch to your PC.
They have those plugins for FCP too I think. I’ve been able to get good results for simple talking heads with the built in chroma keyers in FCP. You could key it there and export an alpha channel QT too.
-
Cool, i’ll give that a shot, thanks. and they do have the same plug-in for Final Cut, the problem in Final Cut Express (in FCE 2 anyway, dont know about HD) is that you can’t keyframe a garbage matte over multiple frames that i can tell, you can only set one shape for it. Kinda makes garbage matting challenging 🙂 I also already have the After Effects version of dvMatte.
Appreciate all the info, thanks.
chris
i’m not random i’m tangent oriented…
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up