Exporting After Effects Projects as timelines for Final Cut

Adobe After Effects

Exporting After Effects Projects as timelines for Final Cut

Posted by John Martin on March 9, 2011 at 7:26 pm

I’ve stepped into a job where the prior employee used After Effects to edit all the companies videos. In some of the projects there are up to 170 tracks…where in Final Cut Pro I typically accomplish the same videos in 1-4 tracks.

The projects are usable, but to make small changes it require drudging through 100s of unnamed tracks and can take hours. Does anyone have a way I can exporting these so I can use them in Final Cut, WITHOUT CREATIVE DUCK?!

Preferably an inexpensive or FREE version. (Please do not respond to this thread suggesting Creative Duck, I don’t have the budget for this)

Thanks!
J.

Jay Martin replied 15 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 5 Replies
5 Replies

Joey Foreman
March 10, 2011 at 2:06 pm

Do you have access to Premiere CS5? You can bring the AE comp into Premiere, then export it as a Final Cut XML.

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist
Jay Martin
March 10, 2011 at 5:48 pm

I’m on a PC with CS5 but it’s the web version without Premiere. Even if I had it, I’m not sure that would help me because I’m editing in Final Cut on a mac.

For now, I’m going to try the Premiere trial and see if I can output to .movs and get back to you, thanks!
Joey Foreman
March 10, 2011 at 5:55 pm

The platform shouldn’t matter. XMLs are, I’m pretty sure, cross-platform.
You shouldn’t need to output .movs. The xml file references the source footage.

Joey Foreman
Editor/Compositor/VFX Artist
Jay Martin
March 10, 2011 at 5:58 pm

I know XML contains the editor’s decision and references the source footage, the problem is the after effects project is a mixture or .AVIs, animations, H264 and my Final Cut doesn’t have a codec to Open AVIs. I was really hoping to output them all as the same codec so I can set my timeline to match the footage.
Jay Martin
March 10, 2011 at 7:55 pm

I’ve exported the After effects project into Premiere and it’s playing back in the timeline better than it was in After Effects, it’s much easier to work in this timeline than in a motion graphics timeline, but still having some problems, as I would suspect in outputting a project to another software.

I have to readjust all the sizes now, and some of the effects are not populating in Premiere, playback is wonky.

For now I may just stick to finishing the project in after effects but thanks for the help and tips!

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up

Creative Communities of the World Forums