Terrified of AE workflow

C

c.g._eads

Veteran
Okay, I just finished a half-hour piece in Sony Vegas and for the first time in my life, I want to use After Effects to color correct/grade the entire thing (I just like how much more power it has). Now, I'm terrified of this. Mainly because of the workflow. I'm scared about getting stuff out of Vegas and into AE without serious quality degradation. I don't know what codec to use since apparently AE doesn't accept mpeg or m2t. I tried Quicktime lossless but after going through AE it comes back to DVDArchitect and Nero (when I burn to DVD) with too much of a quality hit. Which reminds me, I'm scared about the quality loss when AE renders my video. Don't know what codec to use (as DVDArchitect is finicky itself about what exactly it likes - and the quicktime stuff doesn't hold up nearly as well as when I got straight mpeg out from Vegas to Architect). I'm worried about the three generation losses from my original footage (Vegas to AE. AE to Architect. Architect to DVD - is the extra color correction worth it if the quality is that much worse??). I'm worried about how when I come out of AE and burn onto DVD, my footage doesn't stretch to the full length of my HDTV (even when I check 16x9 and 720x480).

But most of all, I'm worried about color correcting 200 individual shots. I get the feeling when working in AE, that it's set up for specialty things, not a huge bulk of individual shots. Maybe I'm wrong but that's how it feels. I, like others on this board, am self-taught. Therefore any reference or information on workflow would be wonderful. Even better if it caters towards my specific problems. But any advice appreciated.

Chris
 
You don't have to render to get a Vegas project into After Effects, just save the project as an aaf. file and import that into AE, all of your edits should be intact with zero quality loss. To color your 200 scenes you can precomp and use adjustment layers, you can find out about all that stuff with the creativecow.com podcasts. :beer:

Q: Why do you use Nero if you have DVDArchitect?
 
you always wanna leave vegas uncompressed and come back with some kind of codec, we use vegas to AE = uncompressed
AE to vegas= quicktime TGA full quality
that has alaways worked fo us
 
just my 2 cents: Quicktime Animation codec is pretty lossless - i cut between QTanim exports and originals in Avid seemlessly. Also, when going for DVD you could export from AE as an uncompressed avi and then use a compression program to get it into whatever format you need. Sorenson Squeeze does a pretty good job if I remember correctly.
 
Okay, I can use the Vegas project to go into AE. Didn't know that. Very helpful.

So I have another question. Do a lot of people color correct their entire feature in AE? *Is it* built for that kind of workflow.

Lostinsound, I use[d] Nero because someone said I shouldn't use Architect to burn to DVD. That Nero would do it better. But I've tested a few shots on each and I don't think I see a difference.

My biggest hurdle now seems to be getting the aspect ratio a true 16x9. It took me about 12 exports using Vegas' rendering presets before I finally found one that filled up my entire HDTV screen (it would only do it as an mpeg - not quicktime - and it was something like "DVD aRCHITECT NTSC video stream 16x9"). Otherwise, no filley uppey.

So since I have to work in Qucktime when going out of AE, I'm wondering how I'm going to trick Architect into seeing the correct aspect ratio. Anyway, thanks for the help, and keep the suggestions coming.

Chris
 
SeanEmer said:
just my 2 cents: Quicktime Animation codec is pretty lossless
Click to expand...

Quicktime's Animation codec is totally lossless, and usually gives you a file size about ¼ to ½ of .avi uncompressed. And, the Animation codec can hold an alpha channel, which is even more bang for your buck.



If you want to render portions of your video to work in AE, export Quicktime with the Animation codec.

Also important is to render from AE with fields if your work is going to be viewed on a tv. That is not the default, you have to choose it in the render settings. But it is very important that you do so, if your footage is interlaced.
 
Hmm, okay. I tried the aaf file but AE crashes as soon as I try and import. I have a feeling this has something to do with Vista or my video card - neither of which I can change without major hassle. Is there another option?

24, you say you go out of Vegas, "uncompressed". Can you give me the specific settings you use?
 
what are your project setting first of all and what is going to be your final project and in what format?
 
I was looking for this answer as well. This will help with future projects. Thanks!
Jgastelb

LostInSound said:
You don't have to render to get a Vegas project into After Effects, just save the project as an aaf. file and import that into AE, all of your edits should be intact with zero quality loss. To color your 200 scenes you can precomp and use adjustment layers, you can find out about all that stuff with the creativecow.com podcasts. :beer:

Q: Why do you use Nero if you have DVDArchitect?
Click to expand...
 
Man, I think your getting over your head right now if you try to learn after effects. If you had a hard time getting your vegas project to burn perfect in DVD architect then AE is REALLY gonna confuse you. (they're presets man)

Not being mean, just givin' some tough love.

Now that vegas supports 32 bit color correction I see no reason for you to take the step to AE for color correction. There are more tools for color correction in AE and if you know what your doing AE is better (or nicer) to use for color correcting.

I would slowly learn AE and do the correcting in vegas using the new 32bit option.

Right now now it's like you trying to put a car together but you don't want to know how the pieces fit, you only want to rig the car enough so you can drive. (A good analogy if you think about it)

It would take anyone at least 40 hours on AE to learn it well enough to do better color correcting than 4 hours of learning about 32bit color correcting on Vegas.

Here's what I suggest you learn more about:
1. Pixel size and what that means when you render to DVD and move footage between programs like AE.

2. Understand that compressing to mpeg2 is the last step and you should do it in vegas or AE if you decide to go that route.

3. Understand WHY its a bad idea to render to quicktime (or for that matter any codect that is not uncompressed or at least visually lossless) and then send it to DVD architect for the MPEG2 compression. Also understand why Nero should never have been in your workflow at all.

I could go on but these 3 are a good start. Good luck man. I was where you are a few years ago and after 200 hours of working on AE I finally moderately confident with the program.

Buy Stu's DV Rebel Book and it will all come clear.
 
joshtownsend said:
3. Understand WHY its a bad idea to render to quicktime (or for that matter any codect that is not uncompressed or at least visually lossless) and then send it to DVD architect for the MPEG2 compression.
Click to expand...

Quicktime movies using the Animation Codec are visually lossless, just thought I'd throw that in.
 
c.g._eads said:
I have a feeling this has something to do with Vista
Click to expand...
You're on Vista? I'm so sorry.
Regarding the Vegas to AE workflow, break it down into a smaller segment (1 minute or less) while you test the workflow. 30 minutes is a huge file to use for testing purposes. Once you're comfortable with workflow and happy with the end result you can move on to the big file.
 
SeanEmer said:
Quicktime movies using the Animation Codec are visually lossless, just thought I'd throw that in.
Click to expand...

Didn't want to confuse him anymore than he already is.......hell he said he used uncompressed quicktime. But thats not the point there was no need to not render to mpeg, I think he didn't understand that he had a 1.33 or 1.5 size pixels so when he encoded the dvds they didn't 'fill the screen' even if he burned the disks 16 by 9.

Those vegas dvd architect presets are there your render out of vegas will be the only render and DVD architect just compresses the audio and burns. That's whats so simple and cool about it.

I don't think he understands that you don't need to have dvd architect do any compression at all. Vegas will do the MPEG2 compression so if he color corrrects in Vegas his only generation loss would be when he compressed for the dvd.

If he did decide to color correct in After effects then he should definitely save a cut's only AAF file instead rendering out to anything uncompressed or not. Then after he's done render the file out to your mpeg2 (NO SOUND) from AE. I would suggest saving the audio as an AC3 track in Vegas and pairing it with the Mpeg2 he made in AE (Adobe Media Encoder).


Those two sentences makes me wonder what he would think of when he tries to figure out how to use expressions in AE. :)
 
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Guys... it's not about the fact that he's confused. It has to do with the fact that he's asking legitimate questions related to his workflow. That doesn't make him an idiot. He's going through an education process at the moment. There's nothing wrong with that and it doesn't mean he can't figure anything out. How in *any* way would you gather from his line of questioning that he wouldn't be able to figure out how to actually use AE or have a difficult time with expressions??
 
It was a joke man. EVERYONE who tries to dive right into AE gets scared when they see expressions I know I did.

I took the time and gave him very helpful advice and even told him the best workflow for him. Instead of just confusing him more I gave him good advice in a joking way.

It's not a stretch to tell him that color correcting the first video he edited in AE is jumping the gun. There's no reason not to stay in Vegas until he spends at least a few weeks with after effects and learns how the program works. I addressed every problem he had with serious and good information and joked around...lighten up. I never called him an idiot or implied he was stupid.

Hell I even said I tried to do the same thing when I first started around the time I signed up to this board. So if I implied he was and idiot or stupid then I implied it about myself also.
 
OK. It's just the way your post came across. If you didn't mean anything negative by it, then I take it back. It's so easy to read a post the wrong way around here... :beer:
 
c.g._eads said:
Lostinsound, I use[d] Nero because someone said I shouldn't use Architect to burn to DVD. That Nero would do it better. But I've tested a few shots on each and I don't think I see a difference.
Click to expand...

When I do really quick movie-only authoring using DVD Architect, I also burn with Nero. Why? There's no video-quality issue here--Architect just weaves the footage and audio into DVD-Video format (not sure if it conforms to DVD-Video spec, but that's another topic entirely.) That is, unless you didn't prepare your assets correctly and it reecodes your audio/video for you--something we as filmmakers don't want!

In my experience with DVD Architect, it's burning engine is slower than Nero's. Contrary to popular (ignorant?) belief, different burning programs and different media take differing times to burn. And I'm not talking about the disc's rated burn speed (e.g. 16x.)

I always do test burns to DVD+RW to preview before committing to a DVD master. Often times the piece is short, like a commercial (30s) or a short project that's only a few minutes long.

In these short instances, Architect always takes a super-long time to write the lead-out and finalize my DVD+RW's--we're talking 5 minutes here. Nero, on the other hand, takes about 5 seconds to do this on a DVD+RW, no matter what the length of the project. Why would it differ in the finalizing stage on such a small amount of data?

For backwards compatibility with older DVD players. If you burn a DVD with so little data on it, some older DVD players will read the disc as having no data on it. This extra time during the burning process is Architect writing an extended lead-out on the disc so that when the DVD laser scans the disc for data, it thinks the padded data is part of the disc. It will then scan the disc's IFOs and load data from the VOBs, no problem.

Architect most likely does this in order to dummy-proof the software for the consumer. Vegas/Architect, while powerful in their respective right, is priced at an entry-level price-point and very low on the learning curve, making it a powerful editing solution in comparison to cheap $99 software from your local Best Buy. This affinity for consumers is also why Architect will reencode your audio/video if it's not in the correct format as the disc you told it you want to burn. Customers want a playable disc, period--they don't care about uncompressed quality--they just want to show the family. Most consumer camcorder users will not know how to specify frame rates and resolutions to fit the disc, so the software handles the transcode for them.

Hopefully this answers your question as to why you might use Nero instead of Architect :laugh:
 
No doubt Nero is best program ever made for burning data onto a DVD. It's the programs I use when I want to burn multiple image files of my video. I also use it to burn test-render Mpeg2 files as data to see what they look like on my DVD player (some players can read just an Mpeg file).

It sounded like the original poster was using Nero to re-encode the Mpeg that why some of us scratched are heads.
 
Hey guys,

Josh, I completely understand where you're coming from. A little more information might be helpful. I've spent at least 40 hours in After Effects. Probably closer to 100. But because I'm self-taught, there are parts of the program I am very proficient in, and others that I know absolutely nothing about. This damn pixel ratio and resulting aspect ratio exporting issue I have is definitely befuddling. And I'm scouring the internet for explanations. However, I'm willing to sacrifice knowing the technical aspects *right this second* while I learn the more creative aspects of After Effects. As you know, there's only so much you can do in Vegas (or Premiere for that matter), and I've come to a point where I want to do certain things with vigenettes and masks and layers that I just can't do in Vegas. Ever try to make a vignette in Vegas? It looks like a preschooler got a hold of the program. So as I try and grasp workflow, getting files in and out of AE with minimal quality loss, and how to control the aspect ratio, I will continue to explore the artistic side of the program. Maybe with your guy's help, it won't take very long.

This is what I understand so far...

1) (remember - aaf file crashes in my After Effects - so I can't use them) Go out of Vegas "uncompressed". My question here is: What "uncompressed" format can I use that AE will accept? I was using Quicktime "uncompressed" but now Josh is saying that Quicktime isn't uncompressed. So, what should I use?

2) I am still completely baffled by getting a "true" 16x9 image. I get so close, where on my TV the image is 16x9, but it doesn't quite fill up the entire screen. Only through playing with the TV's "zoom" options does it fill up the screen, and I know I don't I want that. Strangely enough, I'll occasionally see a commercial play that has the same problem. It will have the correct aspect ratio, but does't fill up the screen. Makes me wonder if they're just as dumb as me, or there's some other hidden reason it's happening. Either way, if I'm not exporting from Vegas the right way, or not interpreting the footage the right way, I'd like to know. Any information on this problem would be greatly appreciated.

p.s. yes, was using Nero just to burn the DVD, no re-encode it.
 
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