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After Effects to Final Cut Pro for editing question

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After Effects to Final Cut Pro for editing question

Hi,
I'm in the middle of animating my first project. Did most of the animation in Flash, composited it in After Effects and plan on editing it, laying down the sound effects, transitions and music in Final Cut Pro. I'm about 1/2 way through and have been animating each scene in Flash, then taking it to AFter effects. Thought I would experiment with editing in Final Cut before I actually the real thing and had some questions (I'm pretty much an animation and Final Cut newbie, but want to learn Final Cut and have a few cool tutorials and bought a book on it.)

Question: For the best quality, how should I render my after effects scenes? I've been experimenting using Quicktime and both the Animation and uncompressed 10 bit codecs. I used best quality and unliimited colors and am using a 29.97 frame rate. I like the way the Animation codec looks best, but I've been finding that once in Final Cut Pro, it looks a little pixelated.
Any tips, solutions?
Thanks,
Wally.

You might get your answer here, but you should also go to the Apple fourm for Final Cut. Oh and is there any chance you are going to post your work?

thanks--will do.
I will post my work--when it's done, though!
thanks...

Hi there. I am a Final Cut user and may be able to help?
Are you going to be showing this work on a TV? If so you are correct that 29.97 is best. Animation codec is also a broadcast standard. The reason it may look pixilated can be varied.

What size was the stage you were working on in flash?
What is the resolution you are working with in after effects?
what is your final res at? 720X540?

If you are looking at your footage in Final cut it can look lower res because of dynamic trimming. The program reduces the output res for viewing at speed.

There could be much more but that is a start?

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself. My Blog: Strange Thoughts

Hi Robert,
And thanks so much for your generous offer!

The stage I used in Flash was 720X540. IN AE, I also did 720X540, full resolution, 29.97, square. Final res is 720X540, full, best. (I might be leaving something out, so just let me know if there's something else you need to know.) BTW, this is not intended for tv (though down the line, I thought it would be good to do this so I used NTSC palettes and keep text within the boxes, etc. This will be for the internet as a series of streaming files--not for download.

I've found that it just looks pixelated in the canvas window, but when I output from FCP and play the file in quicktime, it looks great. I also experimented by using Adobe Media Encoder and saved it as an F4V file, which also looks great (this is just experimenting with one 20 second scene--the completed version will be over 8 minutes long.)

Any suggestions for making the file look better in FCP while editing?

Thanks again (total newbie here!)
Wally

So it only looks pixelated when viewing in final cut?

Not to worry then this is simply the program reducing the viewable resolution so that it will play at speed within the timeline and has zero effect on your output. Depending on the clock speed of your machine and how much ram you have you can change this so that it plays at 100% quality. I wouldn't worry about that though if your output quicktime is fine then no worries.
If you want to change it you can do so:
on the timeline, the bottom section of the window, you will see a tab that should have something like "RT" in it. If you click on that you can change it to play at full quality. The drawback to this is when it plays, Final Cut is always trying to keep video and audio in sync. At full quality this is tough to do depending on your machine. The program will warn you when it goes out of sync and will stop playing. It will say something like "dropped frames" or some such. It is trying to do a lot of math while in the timeline so I wouldn't worry about it being pixlated there.

Hope that helps?

feel free to hit me up if there are more issues!

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself. My Blog: Strange Thoughts

Thanks again, Robert. It really did help.

And thanks for the generous offer.
Wally

I have a question for you. I am thinking about getting Final Cut but I am not sure which one to go for. Do I get the suit or go for the express. Looking over the spec's is not helping. The end product is going to be burned on DVD and maybe Bluray within a year. This is not a commercial product.

I have a question for you. I am thinking about getting Final Cut but I am not sure which one to go for. Do I get the suit or go for the express. Looking over the spec's is not helping. The end product is going to be burned on DVD and maybe Bluray within a year. This is not a commercial product.

Hey there.

I have never sat in front of final cut express sorry. But if you are looking for something to work with that will export to dvd this may be the way to go. The full suite is pretty pricey but it comes with dvd studio pro as well as a couple of other great bits but all that may be overkill for what you are looking for.
I know express works very well with idvd and if that is all you need then I say go for it.

Matter of choice and how deep the pockets are I guess!

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself. My Blog: Strange Thoughts

Hi Robert,

I actually do have another question for you (and thanks again for making yourself available for this!):

If I put together my files in FCP (and I've rendered them in AE as quicktime files using the animation codec), then edit them in FCP, put in SFX, transitions, etc. and want to export the final FCP file streaming on the internet. Which method would you suggest--saving the file as a Quicktime reference file or as a Quicktime conversion file? Ultimately, I want to stream the files as F4V files so I thought I'd take whichever mov has the best quality and bring it into the adobe media encoder, save it as an H.264 F4V, then create the html file in flash. BUt wasn't sure which quicktime file from FCP will give me the best quality.

I looked at Larry Jordan's tutorial and he says that it's not a good idea to use the conversion method, but found a few other tutorials online that say that it is a good idea. Neither of them deal with animation, though.

Thanks again,
Wally

Hi Robert,

I actually do have another question for you (and thanks again for making yourself available for this!):

If I put together my files in FCP (and I've rendered them in AE as quicktime files using the animation codec), then edit them in FCP, put in SFX, transitions, etc. and want to export the final FCP file streaming on the internet. Which method would you suggest--saving the file as a Quicktime reference file or as a Quicktime conversion file? Ultimately, I want to stream the files as F4V files so I thought I'd take whichever mov has the best quality and bring it into the adobe media encoder, save it as an H.264 F4V, then create the html file in flash. BUt wasn't sure which quicktime file from FCP will give me the best quality.

I looked at Larry Jordan's tutorial and he says that it's not a good idea to use the conversion method, but found a few other tutorials online that say that it is a good idea. Neither of them deal with animation, though.

Thanks again,
Wally

Hey there. Sorry I have taken a while to get back online!

I have found that the best way to do conversions in Final Cut from various source files to a new codec would be to use Compressor. It is a conversion program that comes with final cut and you can create exactly the file format that you want with it. It is better than quicktime conversion and you can get pretty detailed with it. It may be best for that to take a look at some tutorials and do a few test renders. It is a very powerful tool and has saved my behind more than once. If your master footage is animation codec you could try exporting through compressor to the same size and codec? There should be no loss and then when you use Adobe encoder it will do the flv for you. It is always best to stay at the least compression throughout your process before you compress at the end. Once the files get too compressed you can never get that back. " garbage in, garbage out" as a teacher of mine once said.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself. My Blog: Strange Thoughts

thanks, Robert. I will definitely try that.
Wally

wallywood77, I just found this forum www.creativecow.net. It looks like a really good source for Final Cut question and answers.

thanks, Wontobe. I'll definitely check it out.
Wally