Outputting to Final Cut

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myducksoup

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Outputting to Final Cut

Hi

I have rendered my animation and saved uncompressed to use in Final Cut.

The image quality is not good when I import the .mov into Final Cut.

What is the best way to render and save as a .mov (or other) to use in Final Cut.

Also what do the render settings mean?
 
myducksoup said:
Hi

I have rendered my animation and saved uncompressed to use in Final Cut.

The image quality is not good when I import the .mov into Final Cut.

What is the best way to render and save as a .mov (or other) to use in Final Cut.

Also what do the render settings mean?
Click to expand...

If you saved as uncompressed it should look just fine when opened in FCP, i don't understand that.

Many of the encoding options that were previously present in FCP 7 was skipped in FCP X. Most pros use Compressor anyway.

I would simply use Quicktime player app when render and exporting in FCP X, it works fine.
/Swe
 
rendering

I was also surprised at the result s I have used Final cut a lot and imported files other than movies I have shot. I wonder if the 4 x 4 sample rate in Cheetah is the problem.
 
final cut

The finished .mov does not have the detail I expected. Is it the sample rate in rendering or just something I am doing wrong in creating the animation.
 
MPEG4 is, obviously, not uncompressed.

PNG is more effective than uncompressed — it's lossless but compressed. Usually this means it plays back more smoothly, and it may work better.
 
final cut

Thanks I'll try different formats. this is a still from the animation
 

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I just did a quick test — exporting a short animation to:

  • pixlet
  • uncompressed
  • PNG

First: pixlet and uncompressed don't support alpha channels, so they're useless.
Second: PNG was 20x smaller than uncompressed, and only slightly larger than pixlet (which is lossy, but very high quality).
 
Yes, I am _still_ recommending PNG :) . I was just checking to see if there's anything better. (I believe ProRes 4:2:2 is better for editing pure video, but this isn't what we're talking about.)
 
When I am ready to use my animation for compositing, I always grab it directly from the render cache. And by default Cheetah renders all animation to that cache in PNG format.

So I have always been a bit puzzled by the option to export directly from the render manager in supposedly higher quality formats such as Tiff or "uncompressed."

What is the purpose of that? One winds up with a much larger file that was still generated from an original of lesser quality.

I would like to see more options to set file format and quality when actually rendering an animation as opposed to saving it from a default PNG format.

What about rendering animations to 32bit as After Effects allows - this can be useful when one is dealing with gradients or uses animations with fog in them (especially when the fog is animated). Too often I have found that such gradient & fog animations tend to compress very badly.
 
Tonio, are you getting alpha channel with PNG codec? If so, what did you set to allow that?

Bill in MN
 
Hi Bill,

Maybe a silly question, but did you turn the opacity of the camera background color to zero in Cheetah?
 
No setting required BillG. Note that the alpha won't show in QuickTime player X, and requires you to fiddle with advanced settings in QuickTime pro player 7, but it imports perfectly into FCP and Motion.

Filip's suggestion of just grabbing it from the render cache is a good one, although it can be hard to find.
 
Hi, Tonio and Filip. Thanks for your responses.

Filip, yes, and the documents in the render cache do indeed have that great PNG alpha channel.

Tonio, my work flow brings them into Photoshop, ImageReady or Fireworks, none of which recognize the alpha channel in the .mov created. The render cache files work perfectly. It is just extra steps in the workflow in keeping track of which one is which, then moving them, and renaming. If I was only doing it occasionally, no big deal, but it gets tedious with 100 or 150 files per day. I guess that I'm just basically lazy, looking for that easier work flow.

For what it is worth, if other folks also struggle with the file names, I've had great luck with this free utility http://namechanger.en.softonic.com/mac
In its simplicity, it seems to have none of the wierdness or limitations of some of the more complicated name changing utilities. Also handy for use when saving states as files from Fireworks, which no matter what you tell it to name the files, it names them something else.

Bill in MN
 
Hi
in FC (Pro, not in X see below) make copy of a Film Projekt in that Size and Codec you want produce maybe:

HDV 30 Frames 1920x1080

In Cheetah make same Render output Size and ! same frame rate 1 sec = 30 Frames.

If you will use other Format every time use in both Programs same Size and Resolution, render Output as tga sequence 32 Bit with Alpha Channel.

Now if you have Final Cut X open "Motion" go to your Image Sequence and open it than save and open in FC.

If you have FC Pro (The older one) you can import tga Sequences direct in FC but since FC x you must use first Motion save it and import a Motion Project to FC than all was ok and you can do anything with your render output you want do.

If you import a sequence to FC X you get only single images with 4 seconds per image you can switch in FcX settings down to 1 second duration but FCx can´t handle the sequence like FC Pro or Motion x .

Best

Andre


If you import your Sequence do that with
 
BillG -- sounds like you may be using an older version of Photoshop (the fact you mention ImageReady is a clue). I just saved out a PNG movie and loaded it into CS4 and it recognized the alpha channel.

Xeen -- I don't know why you'd go through the complicated procedure for FCP (Pro or X) when you can just load the movie. (I don't have FCP X, but I have Motion 5 which is the same engine and it works fine.)
 
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