Finalcut to aftereffects auto duck alternatives

[jejeson2]

Hey guys..

I have some footage edited in final cut pro and i want to move it over into after effects for some enhancement. however the only tool i have seen that can help do this is automatic Duck, which costs about $500, and I am not ready to spend that at the moment, maybe later on. I understand rendering quicktime files out of final cut will make me loose some quality.... But i have some questions;

1. Since am editing native HDV, can final cut output native HDV and is the outcome in this case the same as the original Native files?

2. I was thinking about this. does it make sense to capture my HDV files back onto tape using my HV30 for recapturing in adobe premier which is more compatible with after effects, and if so, what are the results compared to final cut's compressor?

3. Any other ideas on how to move my sequence into AE without interfering with my quality?


Thanks in Advance...

James K

[iThinkergoiMac]

You could just render it out uncompressed. It'll take a while, but you won't lose quality.

[jejeson2]

Thanks iThinkergoiMac,
Just wondering, will the uncompressed renders still be the original file size i had straight from the camera...? something tells me they will be much larger and may eat up by drive space... any advice?

[iThinkergoiMac]

They will be significantly larger. I just deal with it, since I don't have a better way of doing it.

Also, AfterEffects always changes the colors a bit when I export footage from it. It makes the blacks blacker and overall the picture looks nicer, I think, but the problem, of course, is that it then looks different from the rest of your footage.

What are you trying to do? If it's text or something, you can just make it up in AfterEffects without importing your video and export an alpha channeled video and use FCP to put them together.

[jejeson2]

Hey iThinkergoiMac,
Am making a music video. I am doing all my cuts and the basic transitions plus time remapping in Final Cut pro, but then like u said i noticed after effects has better colors, so am doing the color grading and some compositing in after effects. I had earlier struggled with Final Cut's colors whenever I did a final render as there was a lot of banding. But now rendering native HDV for After effects, wont having these "significantly" large files be an overkill to my macbook? Its the 2.0Ghz 4GB RAM, Nvidia 256MB 2009 version...... I maxed up my ram just last week to 4gig, will that be a plus?

[oneearth]

Every time you do something to HDV, even a simple cut the footage has to be re-rendered, it's because HDV is a long GOP codec and every change means the GOP(group of pictures) needs to be restructured. If you bring in an hdv clip into final cut pro set an in and out point then export said clip to HDV again, it will go through recompression. So unless you are bringing in the full length originally captured footage into after effects then it's going to go through some sort of recompressing. I favor a workflow that gets out of HDV right away and moves into prores which isn't a long GOP codec(it's I-frame based) so simple cuts and edits won't tack on more generations of compression. If your working in 24p you can remove the pulldown while converting your footage to prores, kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

If you're worried about bringing the timeline into after effects then you can do it without automatic duck if you have CS4 with premiere pro CS4, along with the latest updates for both applications. Premiere pro CS4 now supports import of final cut pro projects, so you can import your FCP project, save it as a premiere pro project, then import that premiere project into after effects.

[Janke]

Every time you do something to HDV, even a simple cut the footage has to be re-rendered, it's because HDV is a long GOP codec and every change means the GOP(group of pictures) needs to be restructured.


Nope. He said he's using Final Cut, which stores the video in AIC format, which has no temporal compression. Sure, some effects need to be rendered in FC, but not simple cuts.


If you output uncompressed, files will be about 3 x the size.

If you send back to HDV tape, yes, then it will be re-rendered.

[iThinkergoiMac]

Nope. He said he's using Final Cut, which stores the video in AIC format

That depends on the version of FCP. FCP HD uses DVC Pro, FCP 5 uses AIC, and FCP 6 uses ProRes 422. Though the first two might be reversed. Provided the codecs are installed, any of the versions can uses the previous versions' formats, though.

[jejeson2]

Every time you do something to HDV, even a simple cut the footage has to be re-rendered, it's because HDV is a long GOP codec and every change means the GOP(group of pictures) needs to be restructured. If you bring in an hdv clip into final cut pro set an in and out point then export said clip to HDV again, it will go through recompression. So unless you are bringing in the full length originally captured footage into after effects then it's going to go through some sort of recompressing. I favor a workflow that gets out of HDV right away and moves into prores which isn't a long GOP codec(it's I-frame based) so simple cuts and edits won't tack on more generations of compression. If your working in 24p you can remove the pulldown while converting your footage to prores, kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

If you're worried about bringing the timeline into after effects then you can do it without automatic duck if you have CS4 with premiere pro CS4, along with the latest updates for both applications. Premiere pro CS4 now supports import of final cut pro projects, so you can import your FCP project, save it as a premiere pro project, then import that premiere project into after effects.

Great to hear about Premier CS4's compatibility with final cut pro! I should update my premier since I use CS4. You have no idea how relieved I am now.

Just need some clarification though. By the way, like I said before, I had a rough time before with final cut renders some time back before I tried after effects. I like to do serious color grading and I was pushing my colors a bunch, and they looked good in the final cut preview window.... but on compressing, I would get serious banding, coz my footage has sharp shadows....

I tried several codecs like sheervid, prores, etc inside final cut.... and the best results i got were from sheervid, but that was a trial license that expired afterwards. Even with sheervid, I still felt like I would loose quality if I compressed again after using after effects.... so I was blown away when I tried using the native HDV files in after effects and got very good results after compression, but then I could not cut my footage inside AE, so I moved to Final cut for this reason...

Basing on your comment, do I have to compress these files or is it still ok to just export my timeline to premier and later play with it in after effects with my native HDVs? personally I didn't want to compress out of final cut because of the above reasons, my experience with final cut compression.....

[oneearth]

I've never done the workflow myself, but you shouldn't have to export your footage, it should reference the original footage files when you open it in premiere pro & then in after effects.

[jejeson2]

Thanks guys, I appreciate all the replies... I am going to try out this workflow and let you know how it is going....

James K