MC6 to After Effects with Automatic Duck

[Scott Cumbo]

I’m not sure if the transcode is the problem, but i have to ask… Why would you transcode to prores instead of dnx 145? It’s the same bit rate. Avids DNX codecs are very good.

Scott Cumbo
Editor
Broadway Video, NYC

[Frederic Lumiere]

Great question Scott. Well, I’m completely new to AVID. I’m one of the FCP convert after Apple abandoned professional editors. When AVID raved about the ‘Prores’ feature of MC6 I figured it would be a safer switch incase I needed to go back to FCP for this project in panic mode… Didn’t realized that for MC6 to operated really smoothly it would wrap the Prores in an MXF – which is fine I guess.

I also didn’t know if AE would do well with DnxHD (I guess it does). Anyway, I committed to the change (40 hours of footage and counting) and am now realizing that the issue is most likely the Prores wrapped in MXF that AE does not recognize.

So now it looks like I have 1 of 2 choices:

1. Re-transcode everything to DNx

2. Export AAF from MC6 to AE with the re-encode option (really don’t want to do that)

I used to teach post workflow at NAB, Macworld, etc… and I used to start my classes with ‘TEST YOUR COMPLETE WORKFLOW BEFORE YOU START A PROJECT’ and here I am. I didn’t. 🙁

In my defense, I had to wait for a new system to handle MC6 (64 bit) and didn’t want to wait on the encoding from 5D H.264. I made an assumption that Prores would be a safe way to go since I had used it for years… Well, we all know what happens when we ASSume…

Frederic Lumiere
Producer
Lumiere Media

[Frederic Lumiere]

I re-read the Media Composer 6 page on AVID puzzled by my decision to go Prores… I guess the following lead me to believe that MC6 to AE using Prores should be a no-brainer:

“Get full native ProRes support on Mac (encode and decode) and Windows (decode only) for easy integration into any ProRes workflow”

Frederic Lumiere
Producer
Lumiere Media

[Frederic Lumiere]

Looks to me that the “ProRes Workflow” AVID advertises is only in AMA mode which isn’t recommended by any pro editor (for good reasons) essentially making ProRes not really useable on MC.

Looks like I’m going to have to re-transcode 40 hours to Dnx…

Frederic Lumiere
Producer
Lumiere Media

[Scott Cumbo]

yeah, if you’re gonna transcode stuff anyway, i would choose dnx. I’ve never really had problems with AMA (besides h264 codec, which it doesn’t seem to like), though I mainly work on promos and other short form stuff. I still like to old school “import” footage when time permits (I’m also lucky enough to have assistants who take care of that stuff over night in most cases)

good luck

Scott Cumbo
Editor
Broadway Video, NYC

[Frederic Lumiere]

Hmm… did a test with Dnx and AE doesn’t recognize it either. Perhaps the problem isn’t ProRes…

Frederic Lumiere
Producer
Lumiere Media

[Frederic Lumiere]

Nevermind – the Dnx stuff works in AE as long as it wraps the Dnx into a QT (won’t open MXF directly – at least not AVID’s).

So the issue is Prores MXF as it must be wrapped in a QT for AE to understand it and Automatic Duck doesn’t recognize it.

Frederic Lumiere
Producer
Lumiere Media

[Oliver Peters]

MC6 works with ProRes natively on a Mac. It does a “fast import”, which rewraps the a/v essence from MOV to MXF. It DOES NOT transcode the format – only a copy. If you import as DNxHD, you should do this via AMA and transcode in order to maintain proper levels. Standard (not “fast” and not AMA) imports from QT formats require the QT engine to decode and then Avid re-encodes. Neither RGB or 601/709 level selection will yield correct results, because of QT’s closed architecture. They WILL BE correct if you go in via the AMA route.

AE does not read Avid MXF media, so AutoDuck has had a workaround to write QT reference files for MXF media. Since their development stopped before MC6 was released, it’s possible this no longer works with certain files. An alternative (not free) would be to use the Boris Transfer tool. They have a slightly different approach and in the past, I have been able to use AMA-linked files (not transcoded) in MC and go to AE using the Boris tool. There, AE would reconnect to the original QT files.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

I just ran a quick test. AD does the correct conversion, but it’s just that it does not know how to interpret the ProResMXF files. These come up as unsupported media in AE. If you use the Boris AAF Transfer tool to import the AAF files into AE, it will relink to the original source QT movies.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Frederic Lumiere]

Just tested the Boris Transfer tool, same thing as AutoDuck, it doesn’t recognize Prores MXFs.

I guess it’s just a matter of time before they update their software in order to support AVID Prores MXFs since it’s so new (MC6).

Frederic Lumiere
Producer
Lumiere Media