Adolfo Rozenfeld
Forum Replies Created
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There isn’t a single “correct” way. More so with Motion than Livetype, since Motion is more a full-blown motion graphics application than a complement (which it also can be,of course).
The coolest way, but not the only wayl, is to simply save your Motion project and them import that into FCP as if it was a clip. You skip the step of rendering from Motion, but you will have to render the clip when you place it on FCP’s timeline. The main advantage is that you can then modify the content by just calling it from within FCP. You also save yourself quite a lot of space, since Quicktime movies with tranparency can be (not always, the animation codec is a subject in itself) very big.
You need to make sure that Motion is to transparent background. One important tip, though. If when you import the clip, type and graphics look jagged, then FCP did a wrong interpretion of the Alpha type. Go to Modify > Alpha type and set it to “black”, to begin.
If you have other questions let me know.Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
One more thing: Besides all the information I just wrote, I have no real proof that at some point FCP doesn’t do an 8 bit trick. It would be strange, but who knows? Apparently it doesn’t. But it’s not that important. What’s important is that when it’s performing the color correction or other effects, it is indeed working in a super wide color space. I have done convincing color correction with it (no curves though) and its’ amazing to watch it doing CC on 10 bit uncompressed or even HD in RT. The interface is deceivably simple. The fact that it’s now getting better (probably from Shake?) scaling/rotation algorithms removes the last black spot. Oh, the masking is awful. But usually good enough for color correction garbage mattes.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Yes, BJ, you’re right that the existence of a 10 bit codec doesn’t guarantee anything. But this is practically a FCP specific codec developed when FCP got its’ new render engine, it’s a different story (although is totally compatible with BMD 10 bit codec). Remember that the low cost 10 bit revolution started with FCP/Kona in 2002 (Blackmagic wrote the drivers for it). At the time (FCP v3), FCP was at a simliar point to the one you discribe for Vegas – 10 bit capture, but no 10 bit processing. In V4 this changed and this was aknnowledged in so many places I wouldn’t know where to look at. If it helps, I can send you a screenshot of the video processing settings window, the one where you choose 8 bit RGB, 8 bit YUV, or high precision YUV (float) for 8 and 10 bit YUV sources. If I remeber correctly, some developers have pointed out that some effects seem to indeed truncate to 8 bit, but that’s not a limitation of the render engine itself. Still not sure? Do this simple test: Go to any FCP suite or demo system (including a Firewire DV one), generate a gradient with FCP’s gradient or highlight generators, turn high precision on and off and watch banding artifacts appear and disappear 🙂
Also FCP’s manual is quite good, and they write it assuming they already sold you the product, right?
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
BJ: We agree much more than we disagree and nothing like my NLE is bigger than yours. I only jumped on a Vegas thread because something I saw as inaccurate (or mostly inaccurate) was said about FCP. While FCP does support 10 bit output and the higher space for internal processing, I would never think of it as a direct to film effects tool. For starters, it doesn’t do DPX or OpenEXR. Not to mention Its’ scaling algoriths were quite poor, which is a bigger issue than color space (apparently FCP 5 changes that, which is the good thing about Apple – every time they do something poorly and users complain, tbey don’t stop until they get the best of the best in that particular area).
The jump in FCP to true 10 bit output was when Apple released their own 10 bit UC codec, which is the one favored by Decklink and AJA nowadays for FCP work.
10 bit YUV is amazing for broadcast and HDCAM level post. Of course manipulating fim in digital form or 4:4:4 HDCAM SR is 95 per cent of the time a compositing/effects thing, not an editing one. So it makes sense that compositing apps offer higher levels of processing and output.
All the best
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Yes, Scott. Of course we’re cool. That is a famous example of MotionMath.
MotionMath is AE’s “old” (now pretty much defunct) scriptig system. Its’ limitation is that it wasn’t dynamic, you can’t modify it easily after its’ created. And it did create keyframes. Expressions, like Motion’s behaviors, do not need keyframes (altough they can of course make use of them).Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Oh, I didn’t see it.
Well, not always. The Convert Audio to Keyframes assistant appeared in v6. Maybe you mean some MotionMath script, but they are nowhere near as flexible as Soundkeys or the AE 6.x assistant (which itself is nowhere near as flexible as Soundkeys, for the benefits I explained). Also, this last post of yours seems to be about “I did say it before”, right?. While Motion will not get expressions soon, my post was motivated by the fact that apparently Trapcode are working on Motion version of their plug-ins. If FXPlug allows it, then Trapcode could bypass the lack of expressions with some sort of target destination menus, I guess. I have no idea if Soundkeys for Motion is something Trapocode is working on, though.Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
In my previous post I said that 10 bit RGB doesn’t exist for practical purposes. I should have said for *most* practical purposes. There surely is a use for it in pure compositing/graphics tasks. Not so much for actual video formats. Sorry about that one.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Stewart: As I undertstand it, 8 vs 10 bit processing is not about color sampling resolution (4:2:2 vs 4:4;4) but it’s about wider color spaces (millions of colors versus trillions of colors). While it is true that FCP is probably the only sub $100,000 NLE doing true 10 bit per channel and 32 bit float, it’s also true that for compositing and graphics you get the advantage of 10/16 bit processing by using AE/Combustion/Motion 2/Shake/Fusion with codecs like Blackmagic’s (up to 10 bit, free!) Sheer video (16 bit+. BitJazz), Micrcosm (16 bit+, Digital Anarchy) and None16 (16 bit+, Digital Anarchy, free but unbearable huge files). The 16 bit ones will have to be converted to 8 or 10 bit depending on your NLE, but they are used by many compositing, color correction and motion graphics artists as a digital freezer, or in other words, to mantain the highest possible quality in an inter-application worklow (like going from a 3D app to After Effects and then to a NLE application). I understand Premiere can handle the 10 bit files without hurting them if you don’t process them. But I have not seen Premiere since… a lot of time. Vegas, I mostly know what I am reading here. Apparently not, if it’s 4:4:4 8 bit RGB.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
I am also very interested to find out more about this.
Decklnk didn’t say much yet, but some info is starting to suggest that perhaps this is not a Decklink specific feature but rather a semi-official feature of FCP 5 (Livetype and Motion files would also work without rendering, in unlimited RT, provided you have a Quad 15 Ghz G5, get the idea?) I have no real information, but just putting together a couple of things that are true. FCP 5 will indeed try to play back those things in RT, if it manages to do it is a different thing. This could or could not be related to Decklink’s announcement.
It would be fantastic if Decklink could rectify this information and give more details 🙂Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Hello, BJ.
While it may be true that most manufacturers (including Apple) play games with specs for their benefit, in this case you’re at risk of doing just the same. And you didn’t quote Apple’s tech specs, but an inaccurate report from something that someone said (hd for indies is a great site, but they do commit mistakes with technical matters frequently). There’s a full tech specs section on Apple’s FCP site. There could be half lies because of what they don’t say, but everything they do say, is mostly true. Apple does say evident marketing BS about HDV native editing, but that’s in a separate “marketing” paragraph. The tech specs page is quite holly in this sense.There is not 10 Bit RGB processing in FCP because 10 bit RGB doesn’t exist for any practical purpose. It could exist in theory, I guess, but RGB is usually 8 or 16 bit per channel. 95 per cent of professional video formats (Digibeta, HDCAM, DV25/50/100, etc) are in YUV space, not RGB. FCP got native YUV space in version 1.25. Then it got 10 bit YUV capture and editing (but not processing) in V3. In version 4, it got (up to) 32 bit floating point processing, which is just the highest one you could do with computer imagery. It is much wider than 10 bit YUV and 16 bit RGB. You do have the option to limit yourself to “just” 10 bit YUV processing if you want to. Since, again, practically every video format uses YUV (HDCAM SR being an exception), this usually ensures more precise matching of processed and unprocessed segments. While 16 bit RGB is theoritecally much wider than YUV (but a lot less than 32 bit float), there is no video format using that color space, so 10 bit YUV (as in Digibeta, no less) is the most common way of transcoding it. If you’re NLE is RGB, then you know that it WILL have to transcode to YUV, as your destination format is surely YUV.
As for effects being processed in 8 bit RGB, that’s mostly only true for AE plug-ins. FCP’s own FXScript allows developers (and the effects themselves) to choose between RGB and YUV, depending on the timeline settings. According to some people, a few effects are indeed truncated to 8 bit processing, But advanced effects like the Color Correctors do not go through FXscript anyway, and are plugged into FCP’s engine directly. Thus they are capable of 32 bit float. Version 2 of Motion just got 16 and 32 bit processing too. And the same goes for Apple’s new plug-in arquitecture, image units.
8 bit uncompressed as Vegas, Premiere, FCP and Avid do it can look wonderful and be more than enough for a lot of cases, but that’s not a good reason to say inaccurate things about the ones which do support wider color spaces.
All the best
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com