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  1. Member
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    I have some HD footage that is in Apple Intermediate Codec, but I need to edit it using After Effects ON A PC.

    I searched and there is no codec support for the PC, which is REALLY annoying.

    What is the best way to save the HD video files from Final Cut Pro?

    I've tried the H264, but rendering to that takes way too long.

    I've tried the 10bit uncompressed, but that does not seem to play on the PC.
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  2. I don't use FCP but try h.264 with all keyframes (max IDR frame interval = 1) and in single pass CRF or CQP mode. That shouldn't be too slow.
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  3. Member terryj's Avatar
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    Namie, please post your Computer specs in your profile, especially
    your macs specs, as that will help us to help you in the future.

    Your computers rendering time is greatly affected by your Ram,
    Processor, available HD space, if the footage is on a firewire drive,
    etc.

    What if you only export just the pieces in the timeline out you really need
    to edit in After Effects? Rather than say a whole 2 hour timeline,
    why not just setup seperate Sequences in FCP for the 10 minutes
    or however many minutes footage you need to "spruce up" in after effects,
    do you magic there, and then bring that back into FCP and splice back in
    over the untouched footage? It's what I do if I only need need to do
    say, a "pleasantville" type transition from Black to White, or
    if I just need to do a "lightsaber" type sequence.

    Smaller chunks are easier to export,
    you only work on the parts you need to work on
    and they easily splice back in to your Main Sequence.
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  4. Member edDV's Avatar
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    I'm flummoxed by the idea of transferring 10 bit quality AIC to h.264 to After Effects ???

    Why suffer the compression decompression losses? H.264 should be used once at the end of the project.

    Explain your workflow chain. What is the source? What is the destination goal?

    You should be able to convert 10bit AIC to 8bit 1920x1080 or 1440x1080 with little quality loss if your After Effects only accepts that.

    Originally Posted by Namie
    I've tried the 10bit uncompressed, but that does not seem to play on the PC.
    10bit playback usually takes a workstation class PC with hardware SDI SMPTE 292M I/O. Does this match your PC?
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    Oh great... I was rendering it last night and it just died on me. It won't turn on. It was an old junk anyway... it was only 1 Ghz PowerPC.

    The other Mac that I have is not good either: it's Mac OS X 10.4.11, 1.8 Ghz PowerPC G5, 1.25 GB SDRAM.

    Originally Posted by terryj
    What if you only export just the pieces in the timeline out
    Smaller chunks are easier to export,
    you only work on the parts you need to work on
    and they easily splice back in to your Main Sequence.
    Well, I'm only trying to edit 10 minutes of footage.

    Originally Posted by edDV
    I'm flummoxed by the idea of transferring 10 bit quality AIC to h.264 to After Effects ???

    Why suffer the compression decompression losses? H.264 should be used once at the end of the project.

    Explain your workflow chain. What is the source? What is the destination goal?

    You should be able to convert 10bit AIC to 8bit 1920x1080 or 1440x1080 with little quality loss if your After Effects only accepts that.
    The original source was shot at 1080 (it should be 1920x1080, but for some reason, when I 'get info' on the Mac, it says 1280x1080) and was captured using Apple Intermediate Codec. However, the PC won't read AIC. Everything would be a lot simpler if the PC had AIC support. I should have captured it using a different codec next time, so I don't have to get into this mess. What should I use next time I log and capture without loss of quality and can be worked crossplatform?

    I tried importing the clips on FCP and rendered again using 10 or 8bit uncompressed because I figured that would play on any computer. It may be because of the large resolution, but it did NOT play on the PC.

    I have two PCs, one is 3.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo and 2 GB ram Windows XP.

    I just want to be able to edit the AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) footage using After Effects on PC.

    Basically, before one of my Macs died, it did finish rendering using MPEG-4. I can edit MPEG-4 footage on PC After Effects, but the resolution is 720x480 and of course the quality suffered; it's about 1.07 GB now for about 10 minutes of footage that was HD 1080.

    Technically, I don't really need to view the original footage on the PC as HD because the background that I'll be using in After Effects will be standard def. However, it'll be nice to be in HD because then it'll allow me to zoom in on the object and do whatever I want with it without losing quality; I'm trying to do a green screen project. The background source will be standard def 720x480.


    Originally Posted by edDV
    10bit playback usually takes a workstation class PC with hardware SDI SMPTE 292M I/O. Does this match your PC?
    Sorry, I've never heard of SDI SMPTE.... so probably not.

    What codec do people use when taking Mac Footage (AIC in this case) to work with PC without major loss of quality?
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  6. Member terryj's Avatar
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    can't speak for many, but I'm still shooting in SD, so I export my chunks as
    DVStream files, from FCP, to an external drive and have taken these over
    to Sony Vegas on a PC running dual core 2.4 with 1GB of ram with
    no problem.
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  7. Member edDV's Avatar
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    What was the source that you captured? 10bit implies very high end pro cameras or high end film transfer.

    The reason Apple Intermediate Codec isn't available on the PC is because Steve Jobs didn't want it to be. Adobe would probably be happy to improve cross platform workflow. A similar format on the PC is Cineform ( www.Cineform.com )
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  8. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Namie

    The original source was shot at 1080 (it should be 1920x1080, but for some reason, when I 'get info' on the Mac, it says 1280x1080) and was captured using Apple Intermediate Codec. However, the PC won't read AIC. Everything would be a lot simpler if the PC had AIC support. I should have captured it using a different codec next time, so I don't have to get into this mess. What should I use next time I log and capture without loss of quality and can be worked cross platform?

    I tried importing the clips on FCP and rendered again using 10 or 8bit uncompressed because I figured that would play on any computer. It may be because of the large resolution, but it did NOT play on the PC.

    I have two PCs, one is 3.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo and 2 GB ram Windows XP.

    I just want to be able to edit the AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) footage using After Effects on PC.
    Uncompressed 10bit 1920x1080 has a bit rate around 1.2 Gb/s without audio. Real time playback requires a disk RAID with > 3 fast drives to play 1x real time. Do you have a RAID on your PC?

    Normal process would be to convert AIC to uncompressed (i.e. ~ 85GB for 10 minutes). AE will import* that but can't play it 1x without a large RAID so you will need to step through frames and then test encode to something the PC can play with one drive (e.g. MPeg2 @ 40 Mb/s or less).[/quote]


    * Check to see if PC AE imports a mov wrapper. Otherwise it will need to be avi.
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  9. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Namie

    Basically, before one of my Macs died, it did finish rendering using MPEG-4. I can edit MPEG-4 footage on PC After Effects, but the resolution is 720x480 and of course the quality suffered; it's about 1.07 GB now for about 10 minutes of footage that was HD 1080.

    Technically, I don't really need to view the original footage on the PC as HD because the background that I'll be using in After Effects will be standard def. However, it'll be nice to be in HD because then it'll allow me to zoom in on the object and do whatever I want with it without losing quality; I'm trying to do a green screen project. The background source will be standard def 720x480.


    Originally Posted by edDV
    10bit playback usually takes a workstation class PC with hardware SDI SMPTE 292M I/O. Does this match your PC?
    Sorry, I've never heard of SDI SMPTE.... so probably not.
    For compositing over SD, 1280x720p would have given adequate zoom range plus 50p/60p progressive frames. Cheap HD cams might give 25p/30p progressive frames. Were these cameras 10bit? 8 bit would have been fine.

    SDI SMPTE is the standard interface to house RAID video servers.

    Apple likes to force 1920x1080i down to 960x540p for this kind of work. That would be easier on the computer than 1280x720p but frame rate would be half.
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  10. I'm not sure what FCP can export and AE can import but other possibilities include MJPEG, MPEG 2 with all I frames or short I-P only GOPs, or MPEG 4 ASP with all I frames or short I-P only GOPs. All of those would allow you to specify the quality you want (higher quality = bigger files). For lossless compression you might be able to use HuffYUV in AVI.
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