Hello,

I have recently been busy trying to figure out the best export options for HV20 25p footage edited inside FCP for usage in After Effects CS3. Alas, even after much research and testing I still have some doubts about the settings, namely:

- When using 1080HDV25p , FCP apparently default to HDV108050i at 1440x1080, which is the native res of the footage. In order to try and reduce any noise added to the footage I first tried to export a reference file to a clip (meaning I didn't check the option 'Make this movie self contained') and import it into After Effects. I used the File->Export->QuickTime Movie... . In this way, if I exported in HDV108050i it shouldn't have to re-encode the footage and the amount of added noise should be non-existent (I think...). However, I tried exporting a small clip, imported it in After Effects and changed nothing, exported it using HDV108050i settings and re-imported it in FCP. By looking at the first frame of the original clip and at the first frame of the imported clip, the clip from After Effects shows a lot more artifacts, specially noticeable at 100% View factor. One thing I noticed in After Effects was, after choosing HDV108050i from the 'Video...' menu in the export window, in the export summary there was a 'Quality' setting set to 'Medium'. However when choosing video options I could only choose the codec to export (in this case HDV108050i), and I saw no reference to a quality setting anywhere.

- As a second test, I changed the Sequence Settings in FCP to ProRes422(HQ) and exported the same clip (again as a quicktime movie). I then opened it in After Effects, exported it again as ProRes422(HQ). This time, altough there was a slight color shift, the noise was much less noticeable. I also noticed that when exporting, that same 'Quality' setting was now set to High. I'm probably missing where that setting is located...

And as a final question, in FCP, when I choose a sequence and go to Sequence->Settings... I can change the Compressor settings from HDV108025p to something Like ProRes422(HQ). However, every time I put clips in the timeline FCP warns me about them not being in the same format and asks me if I want to reset the sequence settings. My question here is, can I just ignore these warnings and keep my timeline in ProRes422, or should I pre-convert all my stock footage to ProRes422 in Compressor and re-import it into my project?


Thanks.