problems exporting Animation codec from AE CS3 to FCP

[Steve Roberts]

Animation-compressed movies of that size should not play back smoothly from a hard drive. It’s not about RAM, it’s about hard drive read speed. If you want to play back to tape, you need your FCP sequence to be set to a codec that you can play smoothly and your hardware can output to a deck. Unless you have a dedicated video I/O card such as Decklink or AJA, you need to play a DV movie out to tape, so your FCP sequence would have to be DV in that case, and the movie you import back into FCP should be DV to avoid re-rendering in FCP (unless you don’t mind waiting for the re-rendering in FCP).

I don’t know about this inability to import a file longer than 10 seconds. Never heard of it, as FCP has no such limits. Are you using a demo copy?

Anyway, FCP can accept Animation-compressed movies longer than 10 seconds, of course. The issues you’re having are not with AE, they are with FCP. I recommend you post to an FCP forum.

[Paul Rijkaard]

thanks steve,

1st I have a full copy of AE pro so that shouldn’t be a prob

can I confirm the correct workflow from here

to export from AE as DV and forget about animation?
is this the same as exporting animation footage as DV in quicktime?

Im a little confused about codecs can you recommend any good reading for the applications of animation vs dv? or motion jpegA?

The output is currently straight to DVD and no need to play to tape but I need to firm up my workflow

[Steve Roberts]

In general, when going to DVD, you need to take a high-quality movie (Animation codec, or a flavour of uncompressed codec) into a compression app (Compressor, Squeeze, or whatever comes with your DVD Authoring app) and compress to MPEG-2 there. That MPEG-2 movie then gets authored into the DVD.

If you are expecting to actually play your FCP sequence, it cannot be as high-quality as the Animation codec. AE can play high-quality stuff from RAM, but FCP cannot — it can only play back from a hard drive. Most hard drive can handle Photo-JPEG, DV, Motion-JPEG A/B and low-quality delivery codecs (Sorenson, H.264), but Animation is out of their range. Too much data to push through.

So if you want to actually play really high-quality footage (better than Photo-JPEG etc. above) smoothly at full-res, you need to buy a RAID array ($$$) and work in a codec such as 8-bit uncompressed, or ProRes 422. Now I haven’t tested ProRes off the RAID, so I don’t know how it performs.

Yes, you could try working in Motion-JPEG (which is not MPEG!) A or B. They’re old, but they should do the job. Compare to Photo-JPEG at 100% if you’re interested.

Animation is only for transferring between apps with no quality loss.
DV is for acquisition (shooting). It doesn’t like graphics or multiple recompressions.

Whenever I use the term “animation” I mean the codec, which can be used for anything, really.
Animation codec doesn’t make anything look better — it just “freezes” its quality without causing any quality loss. That’s why it’s “lossless”. So if you take a DV movie and compress to the Animation codec, it will still look like DV (ugh), only as a huge file.

In your case (I’m assuming your AE clip is being dropped into a sequence of shot footage on DV), if your FCP sequence is DV, I’d render (use the “make movie” Render Queue) from AE using the DV codec. Then I’d import that movie into the FCP sequence. Then you can play back the sequence in FCP, export with Current Settings (thus not recompressing the DV again)then compress that movie to MPEG-2.

If you really want the AE sequence to look better than the DV footage, you could do this:
– render in AE to Animation
– drop it into the FCP DV sequence
– in FCP, render the AE clip and play back the sequence to check the program
– when ready to output, change the FCP sequence settings to Animation, then Export using Current Settings. FCP will render the sequence to the Animation codec.
– Compress that movie to MPEG-2.

This happens all the time when mixing sources. Has this helped?

[Paul Rijkaard]

thanks thats really useful,

so just finally – I then get confused when I read that if I export from FCP as quicktime this will give me the best image quality including the superwhites etc.no compression involved.

Assuming that Animation is a compressed version of quicktime can it then be true that the compressed version can deliver higher quality images but with a smaller colour range?

If exporting from AE there is no straight quicktime option? so going for an option such as animation will retain the best quality but always the colour range is clipped? as it always incurs some compression?

If an animation clip is included in a DV project and is exported as quicktime movie will this be a lower quality image when compressed to MPEG and viewed on DVD? I have done some tests and noticed image/ color shifts

Thanks for your support it really helps

Paul

[Steve Roberts]

I’ll try to answer your questions, but they aren’t framed in the easiest way. It’s like asking “when I switch on my car, do I need a parachute?”. Sorry. 🙂

When you export from FCP you always export as Quicktime … unless you can export to AVI, WMV or DV stream. And I don’t think you can. (FCP isn’t on this computer)

There’s no such thing as straight Quicktime — QT is a wrapper around a movie that is compressed (in any of a number of codecs) or uncompressed. If you want really *uncompressed*, that codec is called “none”, and it makes huge files that won’t play back on your computer. The Animation codec at 100% is just as good, and compresses like a Zip file: no loss, but smaller file sizes.

8-bit or 10-bit “uncompressed” is still compressed, but “lossless”. It’s high quality and good.
The only really uncompressed is “none”, but nobody ever uses it as Animation is just as good, as I wrote.

Yes, going between AE and FCP there is a colour space issue, but it has nothing to do with compression — it’s RGB vs YUV colour space conversion. Compressed or not, there’s an issue, which might have been resolved with CS3. There are YUV codecs and RGB codecs, and if I recall, DV is a YUV codec. Search the AE COW for “YUV” and “RGB” for more info.

Yes, DV is not a good codec for finishing. You use it when you have no choice.
Same with MPEG-2. You have no choice when it comes to DVD. To squeeze quality out of it, try to compress to 2-pass VBR MPEG-2 if your settings allow it.

[paulsimonrichards] “so just finally – I then get confused when I read that if I export from FCP as quicktime this will give me the best image quality including the superwhites etc.no compression involved.”

Quicktime can be good or bad, depending on the codec used.

“Assuming that Animation is a compressed version of quicktime can it then be true that the compressed version can deliver higher quality images but with a smaller colour range?”

No. The colour range is no different between uncompressed and Animation or 8-bit uncompressed. Most hi-quality codecs have good colour fidelity. Sorenson may not, for example, but that’s a relatively low-quality delivery codec.

“If exporting from AE there is no straight quicktime option? so going for an option such as animation will retain the best quality but always the colour range is clipped? as it always incurs some compression?”

No straight QT option, just “none”, which I mentioned. No colour range clipping between Anim and None. Compression does not equal color range clipping among high-quality codecs. There are YUV and RGB codecs available – search the AE COW and FCP forums.

“If an animation clip is included in a DV project and is exported as quicktime movie will this be a lower quality image when compressed to MPEG and viewed on DVD? I have done some tests and noticed image/ color shifts
“

If the FCP sequence is exported as a Quicktime DV movie, yes, the Animation-codec clip from AE will be of lower quality, because it will now look like DV. If you export the FCP sequence as a Quicktime movie in the Animation codec, everything will look the same as it did going into the sequence. So if the AE clip looked good before, it will look good now.

Any questions?

[Jon Barrie]

Hi Paul,

I teach FCP and i have to say it’s falling behind in the race of NLEs.

I had the exact problem with importing an AE animation with the animation codec in a QT wrapper. I dont know why FCP cant deal with it? All I can really say is that if you are serious about using AE and editing. Get onto the CS3 production bundle.

You do want the best quality clips before outputting to DVD. DV is not the best – there are worse codecs, but if u must use FCP (coz u just bought it) try using the uncompressed AVI wrapper.

(a wrapper is the .mov or .avi file type the codec is the way the data is compressed and decompressed inside the wrapper)

hope u find a solution, but Premiere Pro is many steps ahead of FCP now. It seems Apple have been way too busy making iPhones and iPods.

Jon 🙂

[Paul Rijkaard]

Hi Jon

Thanks thats very interesting

I must say I have been a loyal user of FCP for 7 years but have just today looked at downloading a trial version of premier to see if I can change my outlook

Will take a look

out of interest – do you have any ideas on this compatability problem – is it just a glitch on our systems? surely lots of users export Animation codec from AE to FCP?

[Paul Rijkaard]

Hi Steve, if you are still there or anybody else…

have had another problem with the same footage animation codec QT produced in AE. for your interest it is a chaplin-esque clown routine (images are on http://www.paulsimonrichards.co.uk)

OK so i have exported the file from AE fully rendered (11 mins long)
wanting to cut up the sequence to make edits/ showreel footage/ website footage etc.

I have tried to import this to FCP, and to avoid probs with cutting and playback I made rough cuts from the QT file in QT pro.saving the clips as separate files –

however the newly saved files contain the problematic ghosting which has been saved into the graphic of the file. so when used in FCP/color/DVDpro it appears stunted and ghosted.

the clip has captured the image of a computer up to speed.

Is this a problem with the animation codec coming from adobe to Apple applications? I am now frustrated that I have a fully rendered project which looks great as is from AE but cannot be coloured or cut in an apple application without data loss?

should I rerender the project in AE with a different codec? if I output as motion JPEG A and then work in FCP/color then export as animation is this a lossless process (not reprocessing the jpg).

thanks for your help

Paul

[Darby Edelen]

[paulsimonrichards] “so just finally – I then get confused when I read that if I export from FCP as quicktime this will give me the best image quality including the superwhites etc.no compression involved.”

There are a few ways to get footage out of FCP, but the only way you should ever do it is: “As QuickTime Movie”

FCP works in Y’CbCr color which allows for superwhites, if you ever “Export Using QuickTime Conversion” to an RGB format (Photo JPEG or Animation for example) you will be converting the Y’CbCr information into RGB and clipping the superwhites, you may also be unnecessarily re-compressing your footage.

When you export “As QuickTime Movie” you’re getting an mov with the native codec and current settings of the timeline, which is a beautiful thing.

An upside is that FCP is good about importing RGB codecs and conforming them to the proper Y’CbCr range of your timeline, so there shouldn’t be much need to worry about going from AE back into FCP (AE also offers you some YUV/Y’CbCr compatible codecs if you’re paranoid).

[paulsimonrichards] “If an animation clip is included in a DV project and is exported as quicktime movie will this be a lower quality image when compressed to MPEG and viewed on DVD? I have done some tests and noticed image/ color shifts”

Any clips that use a codec different from that of your timeline in FCP will need to be rendered to conform them to the timeline’s settings. It is my understanding that FCP 5 and up should do a good job of fitting Animation’s RGB colors into Y’CbCr accurately, but you might want to look at vectorscopes to be certain.

There should be no noticeable difference in quality between a lossless Animation clip compressed to DV and the original DV footage. Color shifts are always possible when dealing with multiple programs that handle colors differently. Although AE is capable of importing Y’CbCr footage and rendering it out, it uses RGB to composite. I’ve found that the Color Management features in CS3 tend to minimize shifts in color. You can read more about these features here:

https://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/WS14AC4DDE-84D7-4fc9-B79C-897F2C78EA29.html

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Darby Edelen]

[paulsimonrichards] “Is this a problem with the animation codec coming from adobe to Apple applications? I am now frustrated that I have a fully rendered project which looks great as is from AE but cannot be coloured or cut in an apple application without data loss?”

I have never experienced the issues you describe in going from AE to QT or FCP.

If possible, could you give us a complete breakdown of your workflow?

What format is your source media (DV, Beta, etc.)?

What are your capture settings?

What are your timeline settings in FCP?

How are you exporting the footage from FCP?

How is your footage interpreted in AE after import?

What are your composition settings in AE?

What are your render settings/output module in AE?

Does the rendered footage look correct when played in QT Player? What does it say in the Info palette (cmd-I)?

Hopefully there will be an easy answer after these tough questions =)

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA