After Effects / Combustion Workflow?

Krummi

Krummi

Well-known member
Hey Guys.

COMPLETE Composition novice here, so be gentle...but not too gentle ;)

I've been completing my projects directluy through Vegas og PP1.5 but I feel it is time for me to add Combustion or AE to my workflow, but there are a couple of things I have been wondering and would like to clear up.

How exactly is it best to deliver footage into AE/COMB. from your NLE? do I do a basic cut in the NLE and deliver it uncompressed to AE? Do I Color time the footage first? I'd like to use the Comp tool for all extensive post work such as CC work and advanced transitions. Is there a way to deliver the offline editing time code into AE/Combustion? Or do I always have to render the footage out of the NLE before I bring it in?

I am basically wondering what is the best way to deliver the footage completed out of the Composition tool with the fewest steps and renders for optimal quality.

Thanks guys!
 
If you're working in Premiere Pro, you're in luck, because you can import the timeline directly without rendering. Otherwise, you'd probably want to be rendering out in Animation codec and importing that.
 
The integration between Adobe products has always been a boone for those who use their products, and it's only getting better. However, if you want to bring your work into Combustion as well, this integration won't really help you there.

First off, it depends what type of media you're working with. If you're working with DV25 source media, and you've applied no effects/post-processing to the media (i.e. cuts only edits), then you can render out to DV AVI for importing into AE or Combustion without losing any quality.

For other formats (HD, etc.), you would want to render using an uncompressed or lossless codec, to avoid losing quality as you pass it from one application to another.

To avoid rendering, you can frameserve your media from Vegas or Premier to another program using the Debugmode Frameserver (link). The plugin basically creates a "pointer" file that points to the actual source media used on your timeline. This is very similar to the ability to create reference files with FCP or Avid, except that this plugin requires the "host" application to remain running while it is frameserving. So while it could save you the time of rendering out of your NLE, it could result in less system resources being available for AE or combustion.

Also, when rendering out of AE or Combustion to bring your processed media back into your NLE, you will definitely want to render to an uncompressed or lossless codec.
 
ok, thanks.
That clears alot of things up for me. So the basic Workflow would be:

NLE (basic cut) -> Timeline export/lossless render to Comp. program -> Composition work -> Uncompressed render -> final editing in NLE and export to desired format.

Isn't that basically it? Offcourse one could always finish the project out in the Composition software, I guess.
If you have 3 stages of "lossless" rendering, is it really lossles?
 
Yup, that's pretty much it

Krummi said:
If you have 3 stages of "lossless" rendering, is it really lossles?
Click to expand...
AFAIK, lossless does indeed mean "without loss" :grin:

It's generally recommended to use a good lossless codec (such as HuffyYUV) than even uncompressed because of the filesize savings. That, and it does take a certain amount of horsepower (cpu, disk, etc.) to playback uncompressed media smoothly (mostly because of the massive filesizes of uncompressed media -- about 1GB/minute)
 
PP AE integration is not perfect, but I think a better way. And at NLE you can still render lossles to import it in AE
 
Compression of any form is bad. There are "lossless" compressors, but I always feel the safest rendering either .tga sequences, or uncompressed .mov. You have the availability of having alpha channels that way, which in AE can be invaluable, not only for use with the footage in which they are contained, but when put to other uses with different elements as well. So, depending on the length of your project, you should consider rendering EVERYTHING from any app uncompressed. Using image sequences is especially helpfull, as you can split up chunks for backup easier. Just make sure you lay down a set of properties (for the video files) you want to work in and stick with it. Pick progressive or interlaced, frame rate and size, and keep it all the same. Less headaches down the road. Same with codecs. If you must use 'em, pick one and dont deviate.

I guess the main "hitch" when bouncing between Combustion and AE would be learning both a layer and node based interface. Combusion has its strong points, and so does AE, and both can be and should be used to exploit the best of each. Sure you can do pretty much everything with either, but what is a simple process in Combusion maybe more of a workaround in AE, and vice versa.

One benifit of using combustion would be it is a smaller step to Digital Fusion, Shake, Inferno, and other high end apps.

Personally, I can't quite get my head around node based editors and prefer AE for mainly that reason. But if I could, I would certainly learn them both.
 
Rapier_100a said:
Compression of any form is bad.
Click to expand...

Why? Do you not use Zip files either (which also use lossless compression)?

Using lossy compression is definitely not good idea as data is actually discarded never to return, but lossless compression algorithms are made specifically to be able to rebuild all of the data from the original file.

There is nothing bad about lossless compression (BTW, tga files also have the option for lossless compression).

On the other hand, rendering to an image sequence is a good idea. For example, this can save in rendering down the road if you change something in your 5 minute sequence that only affects the last 2 seconds of it. You'd only need to render the last 2 seconds again, rather than the whole 5 minutes as each frame is a separate image file. Some good uncompressed/lossless formats are TIFF, PNG, and TGA, as they all support alpha channels. In my use, PNG has the ability to create the smallest file sizes, but can be slower to render.

Also note that image sequences aren't the only format that can contain an alpha channel. Several AVI codecs can render RGBA (RGB+Alpha). Once again, HuffyYUV is a good lossless codec for this task, while uncompressed AVI or MOV are good choices if you want to go uncompressed.
 
I've honestly never heard of HuffyYUV. I'd prefer to stick to formats that are universally supported, all other things being equal.

But I agree, there are few reasons I can think of to render in uncompressed for most projects. There are plenty of visually lossless codecs that can render 32-bit, which I regularly use.

Image sequences are great (and the only way to make use of a render farm), but Quicktimes have one other advantage - you can embed your project files within them as a security/archiving measure. I've personally found this incredibly useful at least two or three times in the past.
 
dougspice said:
Quicktimes have one other advantage - you can embed your project files within them as a security/archiving measure. I've personally found this incredibly useful at least two or three times in the past.
Click to expand...


Is that the thing where you can Quicktime reference for use in AVID?
 
Ok, Almost there :)

Let's say that I choose a Vegas/Combustion workflow over the Adobe one. I render my basic edited footage losslessly out to combustion, do my CC work, Keying and whatnot in combustion, render from there again and pull it back into vegas to finish the cut.
Now I have a rendered AVI/MOV file or whatever but I have none of my original timeline information, do I? So do I have to cut it all down again? Or can I somehow use my original timeline info on the newly rendered footage?

hope this makes sense
 
Krummi said:
So do I have to cut it all down again?
Click to expand...

I'm not quite sure what you mean. What would you need to cut down? Ideally, you'd want to take it into another program for CC when your done with assembly. If there are only specific shots that need keying, etc., they you would just render out those sections, and work on them in Combustion. Then you'd bring the rendered media back into your NLE and replace the original with it.

Keep in mind that your workflow may be different depending on the type of project you're working on.
 
If anyone is looking for a Final Cut workflow, look into Automatic Duck. You can export your FCP timeline into AE, keeping all layers, cuts, etc intact. Very speedy.
 
The guys on the EDL plugin page say that you chould be able to export AAF files directly in Vegas 6. Has anyone tried this and can verify that it works with AE?
 
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