I’m losing quality from AE to FCP!

[Walter Biscardi]

[Darren5102] “I’m dealing with an actor that was shot in front of a green screen on DV25.”

There’s the first problem. DV25 always yield a soft key here.

[Darren5102] “Yet when I export the footage back into Final Cut Pro, the image is noticeably soft! What am I doing wrong!”

Are you rendering in the same DV25 codec or are you doing Lossless? Be sure to render in DV25. If you do lossless, the re-compression in FCP will soften the image.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Jeremy Garchow]

You said you moved the footage in AE, right? make sure if you have moved the y axis that the video sits on even scan line. For instance, if the position of you movie is 340,242.5 (in AE) change it so that it is 340,242. This will ensure proper field order when rendering out your movie.

Jeremy

[Walter Biscardi]

[JeremyG] “You said you moved the footage in AE, right? make sure if you have moved the y axis that the video sits on even scan line. For instance, if the position of you movie is 340,242.5 (in AE) change it so that it is 340,242. This will ensure proper field order when rendering out your movie.”

Excellent point. Any movement off the y axis that results in the video sitting on an odd scan line will noticeably soften the image, especially DV footage. This is even true when moving video in FCP, you always want to stay on an even scan line in NTSC.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Bret Williams]

True in FCP because it’s sub pixel rendering pretty much sucks. I’ve never even thought about it in AE and I’ve never noticed soft footage.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Bret Williams] “I’ve never even thought about it in AE and I’ve never noticed soft footage.”

It happens.

[Chris Poisson]

I’m with Bret on the AE thing. It may happen, but it’s never happened to me.

[Jeremy Garchow]

I know, I know, but it happens, especially with keying. AE handles this problem much better than FCP, but I’m telling you it happens.

Jeremy

[Joseph Wilkins]

To to address an issue brought up earlier – I should always render out of FCP with the “make movie self contained” unchecked (why?) and I should bring that ‘dependent’ quicktime movie into AE, do my stuff in AE – making sure if there is any vertical movement of the footage – make sure it is a whole pixel at a time and then export that out of AE using the same codec the footage was originally captured in? (why?)

Can someone please check my math here and let me know if I understand all this correctly.

Thanks a million!

[Jeremy Garchow]

[joseph wilkins] “I should always render out of FCP with the “make movie self contained” unchecked (why?)”

This way you simply create a reference file that references the original media that you have already captured. This will save on disk space and another round of compression. No reason to make more media than you have to.

[joseph wilkins] “and then export that out of AE using the same codec the footage was originally captured in? (why?)”

For the most part you do this so that the movie you are bringing in plays directly in the timeline you are editing in FCP, but there are times when you need to export a movie with an alpha channel and you can only do that with a lossless + alpha movie.

Jeremy

[Annaël Beauchemin]

In AE, select your movie file and hit command-F. This will open the Footage interpretation window. Is the Separate Fields set to lower? If so, AE deinterlace your footage and you get half the resolution.