Do I NEED automatic DUCK? You use it?

M

Mickey Munday

Well-known member
i'm on a mac and use FCP and i'm about to get AE and wanted to know if automatic duck is required? are there any disadvantages to working without it?

i dont have an extra $500 to shell out on something i may or may not use all the time. i was going to go with shake but AE comes with the adobe package i'm about to buy anyway.
 
You certainly don't NEED it... in fact in a non-studio environment you may never need it at all. But it sure does make life easier sometimes. So, there's the answers your questions:

1) you don't need it
2) there's nothing BUT disadvantage to working without it

But hey, you can add it on whenever you want!
 
If you're doing any sort of color correction work in AE, or any other sort of work that requires working with multiple clips off your FCP timeline, then Automatic Duck is really a godsend.

Without it, as far as I know, there is no reliable way to import your FCP timeline into AE.

Now if you're only doing things 1 clip at a time...or you're only having to take 1 or 2 isolated clips into AE, then maybe its not necessary for you.

I would go ahead and work without it - and see how many times you catch yourself saying "man, I wish I could just bring my whole timeline into AE"

I know $500 might seem a bit high, but if bringing your timeline into AE is part of your workflow, it's really really worth it in my opinion.

But - no reason to get it right off the bat. Learn to use AE - take your time - and see if its something you think you might have the need for.

You'll probably figure that out fairly quickly.
 
what about when doing any greenscreen work? or would it be as simple as just bringing in the two clips (background, etc)?

or adding muzzle flashes to gunshots? blood splatter, etc
 
I use it quite a bit. It's much quicker to layout a quick edit in FCP to get the timing down, then spit it out to AE to do the finish.

Worth it in my book.
 
shyt, sounds like i'm going to end up buying it. damn. i was hoping everybody was going to say "aw man you don't need that! it's a waste of $$$" :)
 
Like everyone else has said, it spares you time spent locating clips, matching up timecode, rendering, importing and re-importing. But Luis is right... if you're doing this on only one or two shots at a time, it's really no big deal to do it the old fashioned way. If you've got an entire short shot on greenscreen edited together already, it might save you half a day's work just sorting out clips. It's also a big part of my serious color correction workflow, when I have to send something through After Effects for grading... but I don't need that for every show.
 
is after effects have better color correction controls than FCP? i see a good amount of people say they color correct in after effects.
 
I can do a lot of stuff in After Effects that would be really frustrating to do in FCP. I'm talking about fairly sophisticated stuff here, though, like adding glows, re-lighting scenes, day-for-night, etc. For everyday "let's give this a bit of blue tint, and add contrast" FCP is plenty fine.

My old color correction "workflow" (read: pain in the ass) involved going to Color Finesse in AE for a lot of things. Nowadays I'm happily using the FCP/Color workflow for a lot of that, and 55mm for the rest.
 
A project that I had to "rescue" needed Automatic Duck, and it paid for itself the first time around.

I use it quite a bit for commercials. I'll do all the cutting and timing in FCP, along with rough green screen references. Then it gets moved into AE with Automatic Duck where I'll do the actual composites and color corrections.
 
Automatic Duck is very much worth it for the time and frustration that you'll save. First time using it, you'll wonder why you waited so long.
 
Having worked in a *smoke suite for several years, I can say without a doubt that the current version of AE can don most anything a *smoke suite can, just not as fast.

If that appeals to you ( and I don't know how it COULDN'T) then get it.

While you're at it, get this book too. It'll tell you a lot about the FCPro/Auto Duck/AE workflow.
 
hey i bought that book a couple months ago but hadnt had time to read it all the way through yet. if i remember correctly they put some AE files to work with in there also. i'll check that out when i get home.
 
mcgeedigital said:
Having worked in a *smoke suite for several years, I can say without a doubt that the current version of AE can don most anything a *smoke suite can, just not as fast.
Click to expand...

I think a more applicable comparison would be Flame vs AE. Smoke is an editor, and Flame is a compositor more inline with the capabilities of AE. I use both (Flame & AE), but you're right. AE can pull off *most* of what Flame can (exception 3d tracking, color, etc) but Flame is lightyears faster (and about 500x more expensive).
 
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