AE to FCP Problems

[david_kuznicki]

We're getting killed by a remarkably stupid problem... hopefully there are some easy answers!

Whenever we import full screen graphics/animations from AE, they look horrible. It doesn't matter if it's HD or SD, there's significant stairstepping in the graphics. This leads me to believe that we have either our comp sizes wrong in AE or FCP; AE renders are done with the Animation codec. So my question is:

What are the "right" dimensions to go from AE to FCP uncompressed SD?
What are the "right" dimensions to go from AE to FCP HD- DVCProHD settings?
Is there something else that I'm missing that's causing these problems?

Any help would be appreciated. We're had FCP for about a year, and it's only been recently that we've started running into the AE>FCP workflow issues.

David Kuznicki
Production Manager, WGTE-TV30

 

[pheboglobi]

The Animation codec should hold up pretty well to import in FCP.

Make sure when you are exporting from AE that you have it set to "best settings" instead of "current settings" - because if you have your graphics set to draft quality or it is being viewed at half quality that is how it will render out.

The other thing to check is the size of the frame in the FCP sequence settings (cmd 0). Replicate the settings in AE - frame rate, frame size, pixel aspect ratio. This goes for any SD or HD footage. Anytime FCP has to do a resize on footage, it does a pretty terrible job compared to AE.

Hope this helps.

Garrett