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!)