Porting from Final Cut Pro to After Effects?

[thingswithwings]

Hey everyone! So, I'm dipping my toes into After Effects, and working on my first AE-involved project. I've been using these awesome AE tutorials to get a handle on the basics, and now I'm ready to try making some AE effects work in my vid.

My question is about porting between FCP and AE. I've done most of my editing in FCP and just want to add some frills in AE, but what's the best way to go from one to another without losing too much quality? I know I can export from FCP as an .mov file, open it in AE, export it again, etc., but that seems convoluted. Googling around, I found this article by Ken Stone, which seems like a good option, but it was written in 2001, and even my ancient copy of FCP is more recent than that. (I'm working with FCP 5, AE CS3, so it's a bit of a mishmash). So does anyone know of a more up to date way of porting between these two programs without exporting a dozen times?

The google machine also tells me that there are programs that do just this (Automatic Duck gets mentioned a lot), but I don't have the $$ for the program, and I don't know scripting from a hole in the ground.

(mods, could use a tag for software: after effects. thanks!)

Comments

[jmtorres]

It's possible to export a .mov from FCP without any loss: if you choose "Export Quicktime movie" (not "Export with Quicktime conversion") using "current settings" in the dialogue box, it just packages the exact data you have on your timeline in a .mov wrapper. I bet AE has a similar option, I just haven't used AE so I couldn't tell you how to find it.

ETA: you can make that file self-contained or a reference movie as Stone describes, but what he's writing about is still valid in modern software.

If you're looking for something that doesn't involve exporting the reference .mov, bear in mind what you're asking is that software from two different giants--who are competitors--play nice. Maybe it's possible, Final Cut can take in layered .psd's as multi-track sequences after all, but *shrug*

[thingswithwings]

oh, okay, I didn't know that about the .mov option - thanks! I figured I could still do the thing Ken Stone writes about, but just wasn't sure if there was a newer (better) option.

[astolat]

Fwiw I do it the other way around: take just the small clip sections I want to modify into AE, export uncompressed video when done, pop those into FCP for the final output!

[thingswithwings]

check! thanks for the tip; I'll try that too, and see what feels more comfortable.