So I have added AE as my "Image Sequence" tool last month. I was using QT Pro, but was told that AE is THE BEST for maintaining the highest quality of my full frame Canon 5D mk2 files. Had to get my head around AE, but am starting to get a feel for it ( just basic stuff so far--zooms, fast blur and sequencing )

I have been rendering each sequence to QT 4444 and then import those clips into FCP7--Of course FCP7 on my late 2010 27inch iMac ( 16 Gb Ram) will not push/ play the clips at all--I didn't think it would. I thought I made the time line 422 because that should play right? I'm sure I did all my older renders via Quick Time Pro HQ 422 output and those played and was able to edit. HOWEVER--when I rendered the H.264 it looked terrible compared to the HQ 422 that I started with. I see MILES of quality difference in to the AE 4444 to FCP to H.264 render--so much better

My issue is I can not edit ! I can lay out in the time line and deal with render times for each clip, but the system will not push the clips. I tried, I thought I tried making it a 422 time line---If I did it still did not push it?

Is there a difference between AE render of a 422 v/s that of a QT Pro render of a 422? or is what I seeing in better quality because I started out with a 4444 rendered sequence.

Also --I keep my images FULL FRAME -not letter boxing for HD at all, so that adds to the file size over all.

My goal is to have the highest quality possible through out the workflow and have a really good looking h.264 for uploading to the web. Looks like Vimeo now has 20,000 kbps uploads--I was only doing 5000 kbps--I can see a big quality difference in the 20K kbps.

Is it over kill to render out of AE (CS6) at 4444? Should I just do 422 renders?

May be I did not actually set my time line to 422---If any one has a link on how to do that step by step --please post.. Also is there a time line indicator of the setting somewhere on FCP7?

Any advise, thoughts, suggestions would be great.
Thanks
Bryan

Try rendering to QickTime Photo JPG Quality 94 when rendering out of After Effects (it's 444 colorspace) or if your on a Mac try Prores 422

Both will edit much more smoothly.

Are you saying you render at full res? If so don't do that, render to your target resolution like 1080p 23.976

JAY !!! How are ya !

From LR4 I render out JPGS at full rez, best quality--then import them as an image sequence in AE. Then from AE render que , I select QT 4444.

I want to keep the sequence Full Frame though. If I render out to 1080 it will crop it 16 x 9 right?

If I do crop then I'd like to crop in FCP not AE.

I want to preserve "Master" Highest Rez versions of all me 100's of sequences ( for future proof/ archive )

Idea being that I can just grab the master 4444 file I want drop it into FCP and re-edit it play with how ever I want from there

Trying to keep a general standard fps master 4444 files, however should I also do the same with 422?

Keep the 4444 on the shelf ash archive and use 422 renders as editables? I was hoping to do it all based off of the 4444 files

Also why 23.976 and not 29.97. I've been doing 29.97 because I'm dealing with video and video is 30 fps. I do hate losing those 5 frames though for the end clip length

Thanks for any more advise

BTW

My new style DP motor and quick change work great with my stepper motor swap when I want to go 3 axis

You and DP are THE BEST !!! Love you guys !

Why taking the detour of exporting JPGs out of LR and not just importing the RAW files into AE?

Btw: video is not 29.97 fps, NTSC is!

Great thread, very useful info. I am similarly re-examing my workflow, and wonder if I share some information here if others might chime in with some advice for me. I want, as other do, to get the most out of my RAW files but strike a balance between quality and reasonable speed/size.

In the past, I have worked in only Lightroom and Premiere:
1. Shoot RAW with Canon system
2. Develop in LR
3. Export 1920x1080 JPEGs in Adobe RGB at 72 dpi.
4. Import sequences into Premiere as clips (sequence set to 1920x1080 @ 23.976)
5. Drag clips to timeline to edit / arrange to music
6. Render out H.264 for "broadcast" i.e. upload / sharing as MPEG-2 BluRay, 1920x1080 at CBR of ~25 MB/s

This workflow was mostly due to limitations of hardware and software (I had a shitty old slow computer). Now, with Creative Cloud and the recent acquisition of more RAM in a newer PC, I'm taking a closer look at bringing AE into my workflow as I try to update my showreel. I feel (from years of use) that I can get the most (visually) out of my images in LR, so I want my "developing" to remain within that program at least for the forseeable future. This also allows me to utilize LRTimelapse with LR.

Let's say I modify my workflow to this:

1. Shot RAW with Canon system
2. Devleop in LR
3. Export DNGs at full res and size (or would I be better to export JPEGs at full-res and size)
4. Import DNGs into AE, one timelapse shot at a time
5. Render out as ??????
6. Build a library of these "intermediate" clips in Preimere for use at editing time
7. Edit in Premiere, scaling and cropping each clip to suit taste (or would this interpolate?)
8. Render final product out in H.264, 1920x1080 with a CBR of ~25 MB/s

Given the above, what are the best available settings for me to use when rendering for step #5, from AE to some sort of video file I can then easily and quickly edit in Premiere?

For now let's assume I'm not going to even attempt to enter the 4K world.....

My machine has 16 GB or RAM, is a PC with an Intel Core i7-4770 @3.4 GHz. I do not have access to QT ProRes 4:2:2. What is a viable alternative codec and format for intermediate files? Others have suggested CineForm, or JPEG2000. AVI and Animation are way too big.

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read this and offer advice. I appreciate it! Hopefully a good discussion will provide answers for thsoe who may come here later wondering the same thing.

RAW files take a lot longer to work with...
Imagine 600 frame sequence:
RAW: 18 GB (~30mb/file)
JPEG: 3.6GB (~6mb/file)

It might be ok for one sequence, but what if you have many?
Compound that by having to re-render every time you make a change, even a small change!
(Change timing, adding motion blur etc.)
And then, what if you need to re-export to a different format?

I find exporting to JPEG easier for me.




I do this except I export to JPEG. For AE you just import the image sequence.

Also so far all of this has been personal work, I don't know what you would to for "professional" work...

True that! Another solution would be to export every sequence as a video file, so you can work with that instead of the "image sequences".

Thanks guys for the info.

So, if I am to stick to my JPEG workflow, (and this feels like a stupid question) but what resolution should the JPEG files be? can they be 72 dpi as long as they are full-dimensions from the camera? or should they be something higher like 150?

I also use a similar editing process using high quality JPG as an image sequence in AE for compiling the initial sequence, adding movement, etc...

My workflow is:

Shoot RAW.
Initial edit in ACR -> Apply edit to all images.
Second edit via an action in PS -> save as high quality JPG.
Import JPG sequence into AE, add movement etc -> export AVI / QT or uncompressed format.
Import AVI / QT sequences into Premiere for final edit -> export final comp.

I've had big problems finding a codec that plays nicely out of Premiere across all media players. Some formats / players really wash out the blacks and it took a LOT of trial and error till I found a format that didn't seem to exhibit this problem.

Hey Karl thanks for your help. My wife is from Brisbane, been there many times, lovely town. Looks like your profile pic is out at Lake Eyre - love to get there some day.

Back to the topic at hand - when you do your Photoshop action export, can you share what JPEG settings you use, in terms of quality, resolution and size?

Hi Grant - the profile pic is actually from Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia - it's a dry salt lake most of the year and you can get some great 'perspective' shots there.

JPG export is Quality = 12, and leave everything else as shot, so the highest options available. I'm at work right now so I'd have to check what else can be set when I'm at home.

I then create a new comp in AE at 1920x1080, import my JPG sequence, and resize the sequence way down to match the AE comp settings. The full-sized sequence is 4-5 times greater than the space I have for the comp (ie the JPG sequence is 4000-5000 odd wide). I often add movement in AE (eg a light zoom in / out, etc) so like to have the highest resolution available to play with.

Hope that helps.

Grant - I'm on a 2.6 GHz Macbook with 16 GB of RAM and a 4TB hard drive, and working with RAW file image sequences in AE is still just too slow for me. I also wimp out and use 1280 x 720, ha. But yes, render them out of LR full size if you plan to do any pans/moves. I render them out (to a separate folder) as 100 Quality 300dpi JPGS and I can manage that nicely for importing as image sequences into AE. The advantage of using LR is that you can always go back and re-export them to whatever size and quality you want, then just change your sequence/comp settings for size in AE and reload or replace the image sequences in your comps.

I render the clips out of AE as lossless .mov files - I figure the less compression the better before importing into PP, where it's going to be compressed again (yes, the files are big). I have 6.5TB of external hard drive space, but use my internal hard drive for working files until I'm done with the project because it's faster.

I used to render out of PP/AME with h.264 compression, but I've found that x264/.mp4 compression is much nicer. The settings are a bit to muck through, mind you, but worth it - it seems to be less lossy yet produces a smaller file size than h.264. As I'm on a Mac, I'll let you figure out how to deal with installing the x264 codec on a Windoze machine .. once you go Mac you never go back ;)

can anyone advise if it's really necessary to use a print resolution like 300 dpi for JPEGs that will be rendered into video files? Seems to me that even if you were going to export from full-size RAW that 150 dpi would suffice and make much smaller files?

You'll need to pay attention to DPI if you're going to print your video. Flipbook timelapses?

Although there's a huge file size difference between RAW and JPG, there really isn't that much of a difference between a 300dpi and a 150dpi JPG .. I just figure that if I'm not using the RAW files that I might as well use the highest quality JPG I can before it gets compressed in video.

Perhaps I was too subtle. There is zero difference! It's a metadata tag. DPI has nothing to do with video or still images displayed on a screen. It is for print only.

So if I understand you right - I might as well export the JPEGs at 72 dpi and Q100?

Ha no, not too subtle, because you're right, of course.. dpi is for printing, and I prob use 300 out of habit. But I didn't realize it was *completely* ignored by video - where inches mean nothing and pixels mean everything - and now I'm having a duh moment ;) So really, you could set the dpi to 1 for that matter. And in theory, you really could make a time lapse flip book!

If you are using LR, see this post http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/jpeg-quality

After reading that I went back and re-exported my files at quality setting 75.
To be honest, I can barely see the difference between quality 50 and 100 - but the file size difference is huge.

If you've already done all your adjustments in LR, I don't think there's any benefit to using quality 100 unless you like using 2x the space on your HDD for no appreciable difference in quality. However, I might be wrong, maybe the 2x space actually does do something. Maybe it makes the jpeg more gradeable in video form, I don't know... but it's not worth it to me considering we use LR to make most of our adjustments.

That's my experience so far, but willing to change my mind! For screen / video viewing, I don't think the DPI settings make ANY difference considering the fact that your output file is measured in pixels, viewed on a screen measured in pixels.

Run some tests with Jpeg compression. Ignore DPI. Iterate. Find out what works for you. Jay is recommending 94. Don't use AdobeRGB. Rec709 and sRGB use the same colour gamut.
I don't use PP but from what I understand you can pull the raw files and the XMP sidecar files into it in the same way you can pull them into AE i.e. no intermediate rendering.

As you have a reasonable workstation why not:
1. Import raw files into LR. De-flicker, fix problems (and grade?).
2. Import raw sequence and XMP's into AE or PP.
3. Edit
4. Render out delivery format.

The downside to this is it highly demanding on your PC which might slow down your edit. It will maintain maximum quality though.
I quite like using PhotoJpeg at 70 for proxy files if I want to edit on a laptop. I go back later and re-assemble using the raw sequence for finishing.

Man, thanks so much for all this great info. Very useful, and much food for thought. I'm struggling with what to use for these intermediate files. PP will not deal with RAW files and sidecar XMP, so you have to use AE (although I think you can proxy edit in PP from AE sequences). I feel like I need to eliminate this JPEG step, and stay in AE and PP if I'm in the office on my desktop machine.

I really want to understand all the steps in the process better, I occasionally teach timelapse and I feel like I need to understand the possible workflows better - some students have small laptops with 4GB RAM so working from RAW files s out of the question.

Great link, very enlightening - thanks for posting it. And wow, I can see what you mean about wasting HD space. His quality tester plug-in could come in quite handy for keeping JPG file sizes at a minimum depending on the subject matter http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodie ... ity-tester

Can you suggest or point me to a source which details how to use these proxy files in PP in a timeline for editing, and then replace them with the RAW compositions in AE to create the finished movie?

I have found that MPEG-2 BluRay files make decent intermediate files, so I'd like to go through my library and render out these and use them to edit the reel I am working on, then replace them with AE comps with the RAW files to render the finished product (even though it might melt my computer). I've done this before with one clip at a time, but never with a bunch of them in a timeline, where I often shorten and increase the speed of clips - will such changes on the proxy files be applied via the Dynamic Link server to the AE compositions?

I can't help you on that front as I don't use or know PP. Hopefully someone else can chime in here.

I've managed to get it to work with four or five AE compositions linked through Adobe Dynamic Link Server, but it crushes my computer when I try to play it back. Forget editing. I'm afraid that I'm learning that my computer just can't handle working directly from RAW files. So I'm back to either a) making JPEGs from Lightroom and then using those in Premiere, or making video intermediates out of AE/AME, and then trying to work with those.