puzzled with A.E/create title over project, FCP proj

[Steve Roberts]

It sounds as if you need use AE to render a movie with an alpha channel.

Most videos have three channels: RGB, or red/blue/green.
Videos with an alpha channel have an extra channel: RGBA. The alpha channel within each pixel tells a compatible app whther that pixel is opaque, trnasparent, or somewhere in between.

So, you need to render through the render queue (composition>make movie) with an Output Module with these settings:
– quicktime Animation codec
– millions+ colours
– RGB + alpha
Then you just import that movie into FCP. It will have to render wihtin FCP, but that’s the way it goes.

Does that help?
Steve

[Mcvideo]

Steve

I will try that this week. I was told that rendering to animation would add to render time? true? I read to reduce time to change settings from animation (defalut?) to something like dv/pro ntcs?

[Steve Roberts]

Rendering to Animation doesn’t increase your AE render time, since compression occurs after rendering in AE. Any codec choice has only a marginal effect on render time, if any.

However, your render times in FCP will be affected by any compositing, regardless of the codec. Unless you have special hardware that allows real-time compositing, that is. (expensive, if it exists for FCP)

Sure, if your timeline is DV, bringing in a DV-compressed title clip won’t require rendering in FCP, but the DV codec doesn’t support transparency (alpha). So you could try rendering a DV clip in AE with a green background and keying in FCP, but you might still have longer render times and possibly a yucky key. 🙂

You see?
DV codec = no transparency, but quick import in FCP.
Animation codec = transparency, but longer render times in FCP.

For simple stuff, LiveType may be the best option.

Steve