Best format for Round tripping FCP to After Effects CS3 and back in HDV720/24P

Hi and thank you for reading this

I am working with a Windows only (not Mac) CS3 Wizard who does my special effects for my short film.

I exported a quicktime clip (.mov) and after effects will not read it.

What is the best format for Round tripping FCP to After Effects CS3 and back in HDV720/24P?

Thank you for your time and Happy 2009!

Pablo Lewin

>I exported a quicktime clip (.mov) and after effects will not read it.

You'd be insane to even WANT to round trip on HDV! Get it into Animation or export an image sequence. Files will be much larger than HDV, but you need the quality for round tripping.

Happy 2009!



www.strypesinpost.com

I have worked a lot "round tripping" HDV to AE, the quality of the finished content was fine. At least it looked as good as the original HDV. So HDV is not the issue. However, I use the Mac version of CS3 so AE and FCP played together exceptionally well.

I have had very mixed results going from Mac to PC and back so I gave up and purchased the Mac version, really simplified my life. I realize this doesn't help or answer your question. I believe that there is now a version of Quicktime that supports ProRes on the PC. If this is the case then ProRes is definitely the way to go. In fact that's what I used even though I did everything on the same platform.

You might want to search the AE forum - [www.adobeforums.com] and check out the Aplle forum [discussions.apple.com]

"You'd be insane to even WANT to round trip on HDV! Get it into Animation or export an image sequence. Files will be much larger than HDV, but you need the quality for round tripping. "

Thank you for the response when you say get it into animation or exporting an image sequence can you be a little more specific what format? do I use Compressor? anything you can add to make this clearer would be much appreciated and please feel free to treat me like a Moron if you did you'd still be over estimating me :-(.

Happy New Year

Pablo Lewin
PS Thank you Chuck for your response as well.

Pablo - he meant the ANIMATION codec (supported by Quicktime and I think WMV) - an option from exporting from AFTER EFFECTS...you'll have to rerender everything in your FCP timeline but it's - i think - the highest quality lossless export format -- Best Andy

Andy

You mean from the FCP timeline I select a clip and export to quicktime (I choose the animation codec in quicktime) then send it to my guy in Kansas City where he works in his Window After Effects in Animation Codec and then back to me in animation codec where I re-render back on the timeline?

Thank you

Pablo

The Animation codec is RGBA which is great for elements that are rendered in AE that you plan to composite over a background in FCP.

But if your sending your FCP clip to be used as a background layer in AE then you don't need to use the Animation codec, if file size is not an issue then render an Uncompressed Quicktime. Your problem probably stems more from the effects artists ability to import Quicktime regardless of which codec you use (although CS3 should not have any problems reading Quicktime).

If file size is an issue then as I mentioned earlier I believe that the ProRes codec is now supported on the PC so you should be able to expert a Quicktime using ProRes 422 and they should be able to import that into AE. The effects artist might have to visit the Apple sire to download the necessary reader, but ProRes works great in AE.

Chuck

You nailed it. When I sent the quicktime clip to my effects artist he was UNABLE to import into his windows AE system (no image just a white screen). So I am trying to find a way that will allow the both of us to work on the same project together.

The Project is very simple we are adding a laser beam,and some tesla effects on an HDV 720/24P file and then later a teleportation effect.

The way I read your answer is that if I export the clip from the timeline using quicktime set to the RGBA Codec then he'll be able to work on it using his windows CS3 and output in the same codec to send it back to me to replace on the timeline and render and that should be the maximum resolution solution to my problem?

Thanks again

Pablo

The Animation codec works fine on a PC, you can use Quicktime Conversion. It's a lossless 4:4:4 codec, when you set quality to maximum and set keyframes to "all". File will be quite big.

Here's the decoder for ProRes.

[www.lafcpug.org]

Think you may need to download the Uncompressed AJA or Blackmagic codecs from their websites to use Uncompressed on a PC.

HDV is an FCP codec, so it won't work on a PC. And you won't want to render it too many times with it due to the compression used.



www.strypesinpost.com