re: Mastering via FCP vs. mastering via After Effects

The owner of a company I work for pointed us to a webpage which recommends mastering in After Effects rather than Final Cut Pro.

[prolost.blogspot.com]

However, I also see some things on that page that seem to run contrary to the idea, such as Graeme Nattress' quotation on Uncompressed 10-bit SD. That, and the fact that I haven't heard anybody in the forum recommend going through After Effects prior to going to tape.

I'd love to hear some opinions on this. The guy from the company is keen on going the After Effects route. Is there a point?


www.derekmok.com

The render engine in AE is much cleaner than the one in FCP...It will render it clean as opposed to the noise that FCP adds when you add a filter. AE does not add noise. I am seriously considering going that route myself...except that I have Magic Bullet and Colorista for FCP, not AE.

I'm keen on doing it.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Looks like an interesting read.

Pay attention to the comments about workflow. Often an "on-line" session is as much about "consensus" as it is about quality. Never underestimate the power of being able to make and playback changes in "near" real time. There's a reason that people are willing to pay so much for that ability. Take that out of the equation, and his approach has merit. It's just that not everyone can adopt that workflow.

Mark

The concept described in the article does have some merit.

I am not sure in what exact circumstances though.

What is your boss thinking Derek?

Does he want to take a sequence you have made in FCP and then just render it in After Effects?

Or does he want to add transitions and dissolves etc in AE after you have already made them in FCP? Sort of like on-lining in Flame?
Makes little sense since AE is very painful to edit in and dont really add anything on that level.

The only situationsit has any merit from my point of view is for (A) projects made entirely in After Effects. (2D animation)
Or (B) projects where you have After Effects-made animation placed on top of existing footage but in that case you may just as well composite that footage in FCP as in AE.

He mentions in the article that one reason to use AE is cause it can handle floating bit point etc which is partly true. (AE uses short floating bit point which is limited compared to Flame or Shake)

But if thats the case then you are MUCH better off using Shake.

There is also another aspect I would look into if I were thinking of this workflow:
After Effects changes the color of footage when rendered out. Its only slight but still noticable which is why I rather add graphics in FCP and render from there.
I dont know why this is but it happens even if you render out exactly the same codec that you imported into AE. There may be a way around this that I am unaware of however.

Please tell me more of how this workflow would work Derek.
I am very interested to see if it can work.

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

For short form or Adverts created in AE it would be fine - but for long projects its would not be worth the time (budget) and effort to do all the online in AE

Virtually no-one will tell the difference between the 4:2:2 10-bit UC on FCP and the 4:4:4 RGB rendered from AE.

Especially if the source is 4:2:2 and when laid back to 4:2:2 DVCproHD or Digibeta or worse still - MPEG-2 4:2:0...

It may make sense to go AE for say HDCAM SR but then why bother when you can setup a Blackmagic or Kona to handle 4:4:4 RGB in FCP?

Personally I use AE for the purpose its designed for - Effects, Compositing & Animation - not as a slower Online tool.


Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Just curious, does any of the Avid models online "cleaner?"

-CHL

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Instructor

Avid DV was supposed to be better than Apple DV a few years ago but now there is little in it.

I've not noticed any real difference between Avid 1:1 and 4:2:2 Uncompressed on FCP either.

I'd ask Graeme Nattress or Adam Wilt about the CODEC comparisons or if I get time next time I do an Avid Online I'll get a frame grab of some test cards and see what the different CODECs on FCP/Avid do to them.

Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Avid DV codec is "different" not better or worse. Apple's DV is actually superb.

If you want great quality in FCP, just drop your timeline into an uncompressed codec timeline and re-render. Bingo. Done. Mucking around in AE will take 13 years and not give appreciable benefits if any, and might even be worse as you'd be going YCbCr to RGB back to YCbCr to go to tape.

Graeme

So Graeme IYHO, is there any validity to the mentioned article, from your perspective from deep inside codec-land?

The notion of taking quality hits on basic cross dissolves has been around for years. I remember people talking about it in the AVID AVR2x and AVR7x days. There was a lot of, "Well what are you gonna do?" in response and then you get back to work.

The workflow that's mentioned only seems to be valid if you are working on a feature with a loose deadline, not if you're churning out stories or pieces every day. Especially if they get crunched again to some mpeg stream or fileserver.

ak

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Quote
Mucking around in AE will take 13 years and not give appreciable benefits if any, and might even be worse as you'd be going YCbCr to RGB back to YCbCr to go to tape.

On an Intel Mac it takes only 11 years.

Michael Horton
-------------------

Avid DV was supposed to be better than Apple DV a few years ago

Hey G - Notice my tense in that sentence...

was and a few years ago

You gotta admit the old EditDV CODEC and the first Gen Avid DV CODEC was much better than the original Apple DV one...

Even to the point you could tell the quality difference on a domestic TV from Radio Rentals...

But yes today and for the last few years the Apple DV CODEC has been every bit as good.

And I agree whole heartedly on the uncompressed FCP vs AE RGB - total waste of time unless you are using AE to create your work in the first place.

Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Since you cant export to tape from After Effects you will have to go to FCP anyway, rendering the whole "mastering from AE" idea useless.

As someone mentioned earlier the time spent mastering in AE compared to FCP is absolutely crazy especially on longformat video. Why bother?

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Johan Polhem Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Since you cant export to tape from After Effects
> you will have to go to FCP anyway, rendering the
> whole "mastering from AE" idea useless.
>
Uh...nooo. You render out of After Effects into a codec that your capture card supports, then output. Really, the rendering engine in After Effects is MUCH cleaner than the one in FCP.

> As someone mentioned earlier the time spent
> mastering in AE compared to FCP is absolutely
> crazy especially on longformat video. Why bother?

Yeah, why bother getting the best video you can get? Really, what is the point (yes, that is sarcasm).

Because you can set the render to happen over night, and not interfere with your daytime hours. The same amount of time is spent color correcting...tweaking the color.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

I'm late to this thread, but let me point out that Stu Maschwitz (the author) is one of the most knowledgeable guys I know. When he speaks, I listen (or rather, when he writes, I read!). He has been a founder of the Rebel Mac unit at ILM with John Knoll, and is a founder of The Orphanage.

It's important to note that the HDR/float implementation in After Effects goes much, much further of what we call HDR/float in Pro apps. It's not just a finer gradation of information, to call it somehow, but also an environment that stores "overcharged" values in a way that allows you to bring them back afterwards. Unfortunately, I have the impression that HDR in FCP/Motion simply means more precision in color processing, but not the deep meaning of HDR. For example, in AE 32 bpc you don't use "glows": you just overcharge a color channel and apply a blur, which explodes as a reaction to the overcharged color values, in an incredibly natural way. Let me also point out that all this is also possible because AE has an HDR color picker, while FCP and even Motion don't have one. Really amazing.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

Hey all,

I've pretty much said my peace on this, but I do want to clarify one thing. My suggestion to online in After Effects is based mostly on the added capabilities afforded one in After Effects's robust composting environment. Filmmakers mastering in a Smoke or a Lustre enjoy such luxuries as layered and masked corrections, color-corrections per sequence, reconfigurable thumbnail views for checking color continuity, motion tracking, paint tools, and multi-format mastering. If you chose to master in After Effects, you can have all that too, along with film stock emulation, advanced noise reduction, and optical flow-based retiming, among many oter perks.

If those things don't matter to you, you can indeed render a high-quality 4:2:2 version of your edit directly from FCP (although I'm not sure what exactly you'll do with it except compress it again to output it somehow). The rendering quality from AE will be better, but even I wouldn't import a project into AE just to render it there. I do it because AE is where I can craft my film with all the control of a half-million dollar finishing suite, just a little slower. And we've done it on several feature films, even before the advent of Automatic Duck. The DV filmmakers watching their 35mm film prints premiere at Sundance seemed to feel our extra effort was worth it.

As I have mentioned, as Apple's and Adobe's NLEs sprout deeper connections to their respective compositing tools, this process will eventually become unnecessary.

I'm sorry if my initial harping on quality has become the focus of the discussion?I always meant it to be about capabilities.

-Stu

prolost.com
theorphanage.com

Shane said


"Because you can set the render to happen over night, and not interfere with your daytime hours. The same amount of time is spent color correcting...tweaking the color."

Ok I can sort of see the logic of this.
Although I have not really noticed any difference in the render quality between the two apps I can definately see why it would be easier to use the more flexible tools in AE.
I have even done this on a few occasions before I learned how to use shake.

The problem here is still the rendering time.
On a TVC its fine but on longform it would still be incrediblty painful, especially considering the ammount of times you will want to tweak it before it is perfect.
For someone working in their bedroom this may be fine but for a medium sized prouction company this may very well cause a lot of problems.

That is why people use Flame etc.
The $1000/hour is worth it when you get immediate results.
Time is money.

I would NOT recommend this workflow for long videos or on any production with a small budget or short timeframe.
And if you are going to go through the trouble of setting something like this up then why not use a real compositing program like Shake instead?
Shake is not only much better at compositing and colorcorrection, it is also much faster to work with and to render from.


"Filmmakers mastering in a Smoke or a Lustre enjoy such luxuries as layered and masked corrections, color-corrections per sequence, reconfigurable thumbnail views for checking color continuity, motion tracking, paint tools, and multi-format mastering. If you chose to master in After Effects, you can have all that too, along with film stock emulation, advanced noise reduction, and optical flow-based retiming, among many oter perks. "

You cannot seriously compare the tracking tool in AE with that of a profesisonal compositing program? AE has come a long way but to compare its compositing capabilities with smoke or flame etc is pushing it...

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Thanks Stu. Your clearing that up is much appreciated.

Definately worth a reread before I finish that next "arty" 5 minute short that crosses my path. It would be worth it to go through those motions and see for myself.

What kind of monitoring and client approval process's have you evolved for this slow and steady method?

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

I think the spirit is: use a high quality compositing app. If you prefer Shake, then perfect. Shake is obviously a super powerful tool. The several comments you made about using a "real" compostiting app are a perfectly valid opinion (specially in a Pro Apps forum!). I don't have the time or desire to go into that kind of argument.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

John Polhem said:

"The problem here is still the rendering time.
On a TVC its fine but on longform it would still be incrediblty painful, especially considering the ammount of times you will want to tweak it before it is perfect.
For someone working in their bedroom this may be fine but for a medium sized prouction company this may very well cause a lot of problems. "

Well, I onlined History Channel shows a while back on Avid Symphony...and even JUST the Media Composer. And we'd do all the color correction, all the tweaking, and then let it render overnight. If we ran into render issues, then we hired an assistant to baby sit it thru the night and render chunks. And really, when we send a show to a post house to be finished, they do the same thing. Color correct on an Avid and render over night. So it isn't all that new, and is, in fact, still done today.

THis working at mid sized production houses that cannot afford the $1000/hour Flame. Not many people can. And while I work NEXT to my bedroom, I find that overnight rendering still works for me. If I need to, I can even set it for small chunks and set my alarm for every 2 hours and check on it. I won't get much sleep, but it gets done. But, lately my renders have only been 3-4 hours for a 90 min show. I haven't gone to AE yet...hearing recently about how Stu does it has gotten me to think about it pretty hard.

Thanks for popping in Stu.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Johan Polhem Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...AE has come a long way but to compare its
> compositing capabilities with smoke or flame etc
> is pushing it...

I push it every day my friend, including on the movie that won the Oscar for VFX on Sunday.

-Stu

"I don't have the time or desire to go into that kind of argument."

I think this would be a very useful discussion however.
I know a lot of people swear by the Compositing capabilities of AE whereas
my experience tells me otherwise.
My preference for Shake over AE in compositing has little to do with preference.
I love After Effects and I use it every day, much more than I use Shake.
But I only use it for animation and design, rarely for compositing.

I just find the compositing tools in After effects very poor.
The tracker is inaccurate and most of the other tools lack tweaking capabilities for precise results.
And the fact that it is layer based as opposed to node-based makes any intricate composite so much more complicated than it has to be.

Perhaps I dont know the workarounds?

Has anyone else here used both Shake and After Effects for compositing?

Very keen to hear some other opinions.

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Thanks for coming in to offer your opinion, Stu. Honestly I asked the question because I have no experience whatsoever with After Effects and I couldn't really tell the company owner about the process.

> The rendering quality from AE will be better, but even I wouldn't import a project into AE just
> to render it there. I do it because AE is where I can craft my film with all the control of a half-> million dollar finishing suite, just a little slower.

And the crux of the issue with this company in my case is that they don't have an After Effects operator who can take advantage of the options you're mentioning, and has a full understanding of exactly what they're trying to achieve. So it seems that they are thinking of the issue in equipment terms when what they need is personnel!

Many thanks for all the differing opinions being offered here, by people on both sides of the argument.


www.derekmok.com

Johan:
I think the mistake is the dichotomy. The AE vs Shake thing. Or the AE vs Motion thing. Or the Combustion vs Shake, etc. Software companies have a competition going on: the tools they create, not so much.
The node based approach in Shake is a wonderful soltuion to ONE set of problems (breaking free from a fixed rendering order). It's not necessarily the best solution for any problem.

I bet that Stu also uses Shake or Nuke or Fusion for many things. Yet, the typical snobbery tone (I don't mean you) which many use to downplay AE just doesn't get well along well with reality... or Oscar awards

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

Just came back from online session and that particular post house does final mastering in AE. They throw in a raw cut in FCP and then import clips into AE using Automatic Duck. They told CC is more accurate and they have a lot more control over the clips in AE. I think they?re insane!! Just got my new AE 7 Pro and I hate working with it? Too slow and complicated.

nicknasty Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>They told CC
> is more accurate and they have a lot more control
> over the clips in AE. I think they?re insane!!
> Just got my new AE 7 Pro and I hate working with
> it? Too slow and complicated.

A DaVinci is complicated too, but an artist on it can FLY and to amazing things. Just because you find AE slow and complex now, doesn't mean that you won't learn to master it and become quick with it.

Everything takes time.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

"A DaVinci is complicated too, but an artist on it can FLY and to amazing things. Just because you find AE slow and complex now, doesn't mean that you won't learn to master it and become quick with it. "

This is the bit I'm not convinced about.
How can a layerbased program be as fast as a node based program especially when applying lots of effects and masks etc?
And how can a program with such rudimentary effects as AE achieve the same results as Shake in a similar ammount of time?

This is why I find this discussion interesting and I want to learn more.
Since so many people seem claim that AE is just as good as Shake then there must be some clever work-arounds in AE which I wanna hear more about.

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

Well, I started with After Effects, and can move relatively quickly...after 5 years using it. I also have shake, and stumble thru that...because I have only been using it for 1 year.

I have a tough time grasping nodes. Layers and keyframes I know like the back of my hand.

It is a preference. A buddy of mine cannot get AE either...but is a Motion and Shake Guru.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Quote

Johan Polhem Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...AE has come a long way but to compare its
> compositing capabilities with smoke or flame etc
> is pushing it...

Quote

Stu said: I push it every day my friend, including on the movie that won the Oscar for VFX on Sunday.

A-freakin'-MEN, Stu! I am soooooooo glad one of the big guns has spoken. I am so glad you jumped in here. I have had this discussion with some (well, Johan) to no avail and I agree with you 1000%. I online in AE w/Magic Bullet Suite all the time on a Quad - love it. Love your work, too - BIG fan...inspiration to me for YEARS.

Thank you so much for stopping in!

- Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Johan:
Let me say it this way: if you're wickedly fast with nodes, that's really a great thing. But bear in mind that their primary design goal was not making you wickedly fast (that would be a fortunate coincidence), but rather giving you total control about the order in which things are processed: does this mask go before or after this effect? Contrary to your assertion, it's much more about the processing pipeline than it is about the UI feel. Of course, you have every right to love the specifics of the nodes UI implementation in Shake compared to any other, but again, you're presenting as an advantage something that is not even the primary goal. It may suit best what you expect in a compositing environment, but it's not "better" as UI by itself.

In After Effects, the render order is altered by pre-composing. It certainly is less flexible in this particular area. But AE's time-based approach is not only a hit with motion graphics designers, but also offers unique possibilities for people doing Academy Award winning VFX, as you saw. There's this layer based application called Adobe Photoshop (co-invented by one John Knoll, what a coincidence), which is quite successful at this compositing thing

Bear in mind that that the holy grail for After Effects users in terms of UI are not nodes (that may come second or third in the list) but "übertwirl", ie, the ability to access pre-composed layers from the main timeline or comp panel.

As you see, I'm not advocating AE over Shake for compositing. I myself would use both, and Motion too while we're at it. I am just inviting to dispose the notions of AE not being a "real" compositing app.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

Quote

This is why I find this discussion interesting and I want to learn more.
Since so many people seem claim that AE is just as good as Shake then there must be some clever work-arounds in AE which I wanna hear more about.

Johan,

Why would anyone who makes a living using AE want to share tips & tricks with you in discussion when all you do is bash the livin' daylights out of the app?

- Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.