Need Rendering Help

[Lauren]

DVD, thank you!

[Steve Roberts]

Always start from the end and work backwards.
Where is this going after FCP?
What is the final product?
What are the kind of sequence settings you expect to use in FCP?

[Lauren]

1) It is either going to DVD studio pro or iDVD
2) The final product will be a DVD

What do you mean for the third question?

Thank you both for your help!

[Michael Duff]

can you export directly from AE as MPEG-2 now? if so, that might be an idea

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia

[Steve Roberts]

You generally want your imported clips to match your sequence settings to avoid rendering in FCP. It just makes for a faster workflow therein.

In your case, working backwards, here’s how I’d do it:

6- Burn DVD
5- Author DVD in DVD Studio Pro
4- Compress video to MPEG-2 in Compressor (or MegaPeg)
3- Export Quicktime video from FCP timeline (current settings)
2- Edit in FCP, with sequence settings matching codec of step 1
1- Render clip from AE using high-quality codec.

For a high-quality codec, I recommend Photo-JPEG (as does Dave) if you don’t have a lot of drive space, or if you want snappy performance from FCP.

Basically, the codec of the clip that goes into the MPEG-2 compression utitlity needs to be of very high quality, as I wrote. Normally we recommend the Animation codec, but if you expect to edit the clip in FCP with snappy performance, you should use a codec with a lower data rate. Most editors use a codec that ties into their hardware, such as Decklink, Matrox or Avid, but without that sort of hardware, if you expect to edit, you should use Photo-JPEG, or possibly Motion-JPEG-B. I haven’t compared the two, but many editors accept Motion-JPEG-B.

If you want to do a quality test, try rendering a short clip from AE with multiple Output Modules for the codecs you want to test: Uncompressed, Animation, Photo-JPEG, and DV. You may want to try those at 90% and 100% quality. Bring them all into a comp, with the Uncompressed clip at the bottom. Set the rest of the clips to the difference Transfer mode and view them one at a time along with the Uncompressed clip. You should see black. Run your mouse over the Comp window and look at the Info palette to see the RGB values displayed there. If they are always 0, the clip layer in question is identical to the uncompressed clip. The higher the RGB values, the greater the difference between the clip in question and the uncompressed clip. You may also add an adjustment layer with levels cranked up to actually see the difference. Higher RGB values mean lower quality. Except for DV, you probably wouldn’t see a difference between Uncompressed, Photo-JPEG and Animation at 100%. Do the test if you want to make sure.

For the highest quality without getting into HDR imaging, you would work in 16-bpc within AE, then render to a 10-bit codec or a 16-bit codec like Microcosm. But this is really only needed with smooth gradients, and generally makes for large files and slow editing.

Anyway, rendering Photo-JPEG from AE, then working in an FCP Photo-JPEG sequence should be fine for you. Hope that helped.

[Lauren]

thank you i am going to try this, and i will let you know if I have any problems. Thank You!