Anybody using FCP with After Effects?

F

FilmBoy77

Veteran
i'm thinking about getting After Effects to get into some green screen work and additional effects.

i dont know much about AE, but as far as the workflow goes between it and FCP do you have to edit your entire project, export it as a quicktime file then import everything into AE? or can you just import the timeline from FCP into AE? do the programs work together well?
 
You can use a plugin called Automatic Duck to do exports and imports. Haven't really used it but I have heard good stuff about it.

Someone else will probably chime in about it though.
 
I have automatic duck and its working fine. I do my edit in final cut and then give it to the AE guy and is able to see every layer i used.
 
As others have already said Automatic Duck is the only way to get your timeline into AE. But if all you are doing is isolated effects/green screen work then you can just open up the source footage in AE, do what you need to do, then kick out a QT to use in FCP.

-A
 
:furious3: damn, automatic duck, an additional $500 on top of getting AE. okay, this'll have to wait until I cash in on another client project, lol. thanx guys.
 
You could get Shake for that price and leave it at that. If you can't do your graphics in Motion... you should probably hire out anyway.

CaptM
 
I use Shake for all my green screen work. But I also use AE. Now, I never needed to export from my timeline directly into AE. I would export all the clips separately (with handles) to work with in AE. Then render out the final and import that as a clip into FCP. I never had problems with that.

But for green screen, it is really handy to SEND TO SHAKE...
 
oh that's good to know. i've been reading on shake all day. the academic version is only about $250 too. :thumbup:

hey Shane, do you have any footage or clips that you've done using Shake? green screen stuff?

thanx for the link jcskeeter!
 
That links to the tests I was doing with DV Matte Pro (see the watermark) and After Effects. After Effects did a decent job, but really added noise to the main subject. I had to use Shake to make a hold out matte to basically cookie-cut around the person, and then the key looks good.

No...no links. Every time I post a link on my .mac account my usage suddenly jumps and before I know it the end of the month comes and no one can view my page.

Need to watch the shows I work on. They are on cable...History Channel. No keying on this new show, however.
 
I'd also like to add that After Effects 7 is not a universal binary, so you might want to hold out for a a bit longer untill they release CS3 and update the video applications.

Also with Shake, beware that it has a different work methodology to it (node based), not to mention possibly a large learning curve.

Oh, and I got my copy of Shake just last week (I played around with the demo) and I'm loving it!
 
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