Exporting with FCP & AE

T

ThisIsMe

Member
Hi, I've recently done a short video which is sort of a test for a future project I will be doing in a month. I'm pretty clueless when it comes to codecs & blah blah, but I'll go over how the video was put together.

Shot on the 550D, the footage was converted on MPEG Streamclip to ProRes 422. Some of the shots were at 24fps 1080p, and some were 60fps 720p.

I edited the footage together, while my friend did AE work on the clips. Some of the clips he used though were from certain draft exports I did in 720p ProRes. He ended up giving me the clips which I in turn put back into FCP, exported AGAIN in 720p with everything locked down, effects, edit, sound & all.

We then put it back into AE & colour corrected/graded it & exported it as ProRes again. Now that seems to cause problems with uploading to Youtube & such, so I tried exporting the file into H.264 which looked horrible.

It would appear I've taken quite a majorly amateur approach to the exporting of footage and how to actually it. I'm totally at a loss, and haven't found particularly useful videos online.

Please, if someone can tell me what I'm specifically doing wrong, I'd appreciate it. If you need me to explain this a bit better, I will, but I'm just in a rush.

THANKS!
 
If you did a prores export from your FCP timeline and it looked fine, you should be able to do an h264 just as well. If the prores export had problems, then you may have bigger issues.

Check your h264 settings and try again; you can also open your "good" prores final edit in MPEG Streamclip and try exporting from there;

To speed up testing your output, set your in & out frames on the FCP timeline to a couple seconds and try different settings. When you get a good output, just clear in & out - if you don't quit FCP, the settings stay constant for output.

BTW, this is completely the wrong thread for this - there's an FCP forum on this site.
 
Oh man, don't do that... AE isn't a final output sort of thing - render to prores and drop the AE clips into your FCP timeline, render out from there. You're not grading a full-on edit in AE are you? Use Color for that, or the three-way.

If you're pre-rendering to do more work in AE, use ProRes or animation - if you're pre-rendering with an alpha channel, you need animation or a still sequence format.
 
Okay, I'll explain myself again, hopefully a bit better.

I've made a teaser trailer as a sort of test for the actual project. The test features special effects & was shot flat, & so needed grading. The bulk of the shots was 24p/1080p, though some was 60p/720p. Ultimately we decided we would just have the footage all go down to 720p (probably a silly decision really).

- Converted Raw h.264 video file from 550d using MPEG Streamclip into ProRes 422.
- Edited in FCP, using the converted files.
- Once I had the cut nailed down, I began sending clips to who I'm working with on another computer who would apply effects & such onto them.
- When he was done on certain clips he would send them BACK to me, and I'd put them in their place on the timeline.
- Once the clips were done, and all on FCP, and I had the entire project completed (OTHER THAN COLOUR GRADING), we sent it AGAIN, back to AE.
- Colour graded the video (it's only 1' 10" long) in AE. Rendered out the ProRes version which wasn't the best looking video, but it was ultimately acceptable. When we alternatively rendered out a H.264 version it was horrible.

Is using FCP for colour grading much more recommended than AE? Because to be honest with you, I prefer FCP for colour grading but my friend is adamant on using AE's curves & such. Neither of us are familiar with Color, how well does it 'interact' with FCP & such? Would it be much wiser for me to edit in ProRes, replace footage with original h.264, send the footage to Color, grade it there, and then go back to FCP to export the clip in H.264, send it to AE and apply the effects and then render it out, still in h.264? My biggest worry about that though is that I'm totally unfamiliar with Color and I have only heard it's a hard program to learn?

My friend knows more about using Animation, but I'm not too familiar with it? Other than it makes massive files? Also, using an Alpha channel?

Sorry for being a bit of a newbie, but it would be so much use if people could explain this to me, or at least point me in the direction of what can specifically help me?

Thanks!

Also, sorry if this is in the wrong forum, can a mod please move it.
 
The way you're are dong it so far is OK.
Now, Render out the Final (colored) version out of AE Prores. This is your digital Master. Archive it forever.
Take that filer into Compressor or Episode or Squeeze and create your deliverable. Your .h264 version. keep the data rate high for better quality.
 
Grading an edit in AE can get very unmanageable with an edit of much length at all. If you need even slightly different settings from clip to clip, you'll find yourself with a big stack of adjustment layers before long. And then there's the issue of transitions, with overlapping dissolves needing different treatments.

I've played with color a little, but generally use FCP's three-way for minor tweaks, and do shot-by-shot color in AE and render out. You can duplicate curve or level settings with AE, or use finesse and save settings when shots are similar. Or get something like magic bullet for FCP. AE is really more of a"clip by clip" program. Color Finesse is likely why some people want to toss a whole edit in AE, but even a 30 second spot seems unwieldy to me. I'd google around a bit and see if color is a good choice for you, as you already have it. It's on my "figure this out" list (which is a long list most weeks...)
 
Thanks for all the advice in this thread, I haven't had the oppurtunity to try the latest suggestion of using Compressor or even going back to FCP for final export, but may do soon. Very useful forum!
 
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