Tricky out put for Full HD 1080P in After Effects

[Chikyujin]

Hi, I am an independent film maker and I've been editing my short film with tons of digital still pictures in After Effects CS3.
My question is when I look at the composition panel I found two different options:
DVCPRO HD 1080 29.28 and HDTV 1080 24
First of all I don't really know the exact differences and I wonder why there are no 23.97 frame rate option.
Because My final goal is to out put the picture based footage into Final Cut Pro in the highest possible quality as Full HD 1080 Progressive 23.98 frames
so that I can edit the video with sound for projecting in HDTV (Broadcast)
But I found so many different out put options in output module inside the Render Queue too.
I tested several times with different options but It just so hard to tell which composition, format and codec would be the best for my project.

Actually I already did a lot of editing and in the end I realized I had been editing all wrong way. That's I realized when I watched the final video in HDTV...
So It would be grateful if somebody could give me any idea.

Regards,

[poisondeathray]

What was wrong with the editing? Can you be more specific?

I'm on PC version, but I think the settings should be similar for After Effects

You can change the project settings in After Effects to 23.976 or whatever you want, but you should probably use the same settings as your input footage or else you may get sync issues and choppy playback if the conversion isn't done right - so it depends what you shot the original footage with.

To export, you should use Quicktime lossless, because a) no loss of quality b) compatibility with FCP.

(use either animation setting with RGB+ if you have alpha channel in your project, or uncompressed - eitherway it's going to be huge in filesize so make sure you have a lot of HD space)

[edDV]

What is your source format and project setting?

I haven't used After Effects for a generation or two but you can't just convert interlace to 23.976p that way.

Explain your source, work path and output goals.

[Chikyujin]

Hi, Thank you so mach for your help!!!
I shot the footage with my digital still camera so the source format is JPEG 2592 x 1944 (Square Pixels).
I directly imported the source footage to After Effect and made composition as HDTV 1080 24 and then As you wrote, I exported as Quicktime format, Animation,
Then I imported in Final Cut Pro, It seems fine on my screen. But in the sequence setting in FCP, I only found HDTV 1080i Is this I means the video is going to be interlaced?
I also wondered that the aspect ratio setting it Square is this fine for projecting in HDTV? and I found other HD aspect ratio options too...
I tested exporting Quicktime format with DVCPRO HD 1080P 30 instead of animation, and It also seems fine too in FCP as the aspect ratio HD 1280 x 1080.
Then I also found the option XDCAM HD 1080P 24 as codec in AE.
I am confused in between AE and FCP...

Regards,

[poisondeathray]

For AE:
-I wouldn't use either because they are both lossy, although very minimally
-I don't think either preserves the alpha channel
-Don't use DVCPRO HD, as it is actually downsampled in resolution
-I'm not too familiar with XDCAM HD (EdDV will know more), but if FCP will accept 1080p24, that might be a good alternative to use if you aren't preserving the alpha channel

1080p 1:1 square pixels is fine for HDTV, but what is your export format and what are you using to project/display?

Sorry I can't help you farther, as my experience ends with AE (on Windows), as I do not use FCP. But it sounds like you have to resolve some issues with settings in FCP (i.e. 1080i vs 1080p). I would imagine it has a 1080p24 project setting when using Apple's own QT Animation for import.

Another option might be to export a lossless image format (e.g. .tga or .png sequence), which I think FCP should support

Perhaps a mod can split this thread or move to the MAC section?

[Chikyujin]

OK, Thanks a lot!
Some doubt are cleared now.