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FCP Sequence Quality
I have set up my sequence for FCP to work with miniDV using their set up wizard, but have one quality issue that
I can’t figure out. I use After Effects a lot, so I’m exporting QT footage as self contained clips from the FCP sequence
for use in AE. When I open the footage in AE, I notice that the footage is “Millions of Colors” and NOT “Millions of Colors+”.
I’m sure this is due to a setting within my FCP sequence, does anyone know how to get the highest quality setting out of
my sequence using miniDV footage, so that when I export from the timeline to AE (or to MPEG-2 encoding for DVD for that matter)
that I’m getting the best looking footage possible.
Thanks, Jason -
4 Replies
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Millions+ just means that it has alpha (transparency). You will notice a huge quality loss because you are working with DV and it is highly compressed. That said, you just export a QuickTime move (self-contained like it sounds like you are doing) and pull that into AE. I’m a bit confused where you would be seeing the “Millions of Colors” for DV footage, but you may be talking about your render settings coming out of AE.
-Todd Beabout
Vazda Studios -
DV doesn’t have an alpha channel. That’s what millions of colors+ means. The quality is the same as millions of colors, but it just has a alpha channel included.
So if you digitized over firewire, you copied data from the tape to the computer. No quailty loss or recompression.
If you export as a quicktime movie (not quicktime compression) then you have no quailty loss (except for the fact that all of the titles, transitions, filters, etc (anything that you had to render) was rendered in the DV codec (4:1:1 color space and DV compression)).
If you then bring that file into AE, there’s no quailty loss. It’s still DV so it is what it is, but it didn’t get any works.
-Russ
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Thanks for explaining this to me. I was worried I was doing something wrong.
Thanks, Jason -
Jason,
If you are just cutting in FC, export as “refference movie” (not self-contained). Save a lot of space in your HDs.
Rafael
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