XDCAM in AE and Color - Native or Transcode?

Kevin Marshall

Kevin Marshall

Active member
I've seen this discussion before, but I've yet to see any definitive answers, so I'll throw it out there again, as it applies to a project I'm currently working on.

I'll be shooting a 20 minute short soon on an EX1. I've shot with it several times before for smaller school projects, getting acceptable results staying native in a FCP to Color workflow (with ProRes out of Color back to FCP). The workflow for this new short will require a few mild FX shots (some greenscreen set extensions through doors, and a miniature comped into one shot), which will roundtrip through AE before everything goes to Color.

Anything I export from AE back to FCP would be ProRes, as that seems better than re-encoding to XDCAM. The question I have is - would it be beneficial to transcode those shots to ProRes before going into AE? It obviously doesn't "improve" the footage, but does preserving the footage in a 10-bit 4:2:2 format at the start help mitigate banding and such when keying/grading? And does FCP exhibit any issues mixing XDCAM and ProRes in one timeline?

I would greatly appreciate any thoughts or experience anyone can share.
 
Color will work with the source in floating point regardless, as long as you aren't re-encoding BACK to xdcam, bringing xdcam into color will be fine. As for AE, I don't think you have an option as ae doesn't support xdcam import as far as I know. Just go to prores first with anything you bring into ae.
 
Thanks, Fohdeesha. Didn't know that about AE...

EDIT: Seems that AE and Premiere CS5 can both work with XDCAM from the .mp4 files in the original folder structure. Maybe they just don't like the .mov files from FCP's Log & Transfer...
 
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I've heard about problems with this, but I've never had an issue. I use Boris XML transfer to export my Final Cut Sequence (with native XDCAM EX media) to AE, do my compositing and then render out to prores. I've done maybe a dozen projects this way, no problem. Maybe I'm just lucky. I use XDCAM going through Color as well, no issues.
Bob Pierce
 
Yeah, haven't had any problems with XDCAM in Color to date. Floating point seems to hold well, as I ran a clip through the same heavy-handed grade as native and various prores types. Difference matte on the renders showed a virtually black screen. But I do remember my friend complaining about FCP to AE issues with our XDCAM footage before...

I'll be able to test some workflows this week - see what happens...
 
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