[Andrew Hoag]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. True Comp Duplicator is cheap and does what I need it to – thanks.

[Andrew Hoag]

Did anyone ever find a workaround on this? I have 50 clips, none longer than two minutes, and I can’t even change one of the clips destination or settings without a 30 second wheel of death. If I even think about trying to apply settings to all the clips at once, Compressor crashes. This is a HUGE pain and although I just caught onto the EOS-1 plugin for FCP, I don’t have the original files on my 7D anymore and can’t use log & transfer to bypass Compressor. The only solution I can think of is burning all the files back to the CF card and reimporting with FCPs log and transfer, but I still would like to get the solution for Compressor. After all, Final Cut Studio is a pricey software package, so when things don’t work the way they need to I get pretty frustrated.

I’m on a Mac Pro Quad Core with 8 gigs of ram, so I don’t see how my system could be the problem.

Any ideas guys?

[Andrew Hoag]

I think this was what I was looking to hear, as I myself questioned whether or not doing it. I myself prefer animating in AE, but just couldnt seem to get the simple logistics of the workflow Dave just mentioned. It’s always good to hear someone else doing the same thing. I’ll cut raw footage in FCP, make a single comp for each shot and key/animate in AE, then port it back and replace in the original FCP timeline. I think my biggest disconnect was exporting the ENTIRE cut into one comp in AE, but Dave – the single comp per shot is an excellent workaround. Thanks so much – so simple yet so important.

[Andrew Hoag]

I’m always concerned about limiting myself to the keyed footage / background being rendered into one file since there are, for lack of a better word, “fake” camera movements that I animate with scale / position for backgrounds and the keyed footage in FCP. The footage shot comes in lengthy 45 minute takes with several of these 2 minute clips throughout. The rationale was that a long take could be brought into AE, keyed, and rendered out overnight after office hours, so that no one was watching keys render out over and over. That way, when I’d come into to edit the next morning, all the footage was keyed for me and I could cut / animate in FCP.