FCP to AE and back to FCP

[Dave Johnson]

[(best settings, lossless) … I need to render it … after rendering, the footage is not as sharp and the motion looks weird.]

Sounds like you rendered to a different codec from AE than your FCP sequence … you might try using AE’s render settings & output module options to make your own settings rather than using the “best settings, lossless” preset, which I don’t recall off-hand, but I doubt very much defaults to DVC-Pro HD. Note, to avoid re-render in FCP, you’ll need to make sure everything about your AE render matches your FCP sequence … codec, frame rate, audio settings, etc., etc. Most likely, that will resolve the footage differences as well.

[Maxime Marquis]

Thanks to you two. Dave, I’ll try your solution but I created my AE comp by dragging my footage on the icon “create a new comp”. Isn’t it supposed to create a comp matching the footage frame rate? (ie 23.976)

[David Johnson]

One other thing I thought of that will help you match your AE render to your FCP sequence …

Bring the AE render you’re having trouble with into FCP. When you right click the FCP bin window there is a list of things you can have it show about each file and sequence (video codec, frame rate, aspect ratio, audio codec, etc, etc.). Check all the pertinent ones then go down the list and compare the AE file specs to the FCP sequence specs. Then, when you re-render out of AE, change everything in the output module and render settings to match everything about your FCP sequence.