Moho Forum

Hi,
My strategy is to edit the animation w/music together in Final Cut Pro.

When I export out of AS I use quicktime > dv ntsc > high quality > interlaced.
In the Quicktime player the video looks fine. But when I open it in Final Cut it's squished and off-center by maybe 5%.
I checked all the FCP settings and they're alright; theyre set to DV.

Does anyone have a solution? Other workflow strategies are also welcome.
The end product will be go on YouTube -hopefully very soon.

Thanks for all your help.
-Craig

Does the DV output compress the animation at all? I suppose you could try exporting with another codec. Try animation as I know that that's with zero compression on it.

My 2c worth, anyway. Hope you find an answer!!

Yea, thanks.
I don't think that's the issue.
I'm thinking AS is outputting inferior codec.
AS says DV but it's not compatible.
I ran it through Qtime player and converted it there. Now it plays fine.

The DV codec isn't recommended for animation because it does a hard compression and flattens all colours. For files inside your computer which go from one application to another, try some codec like "animation" or"PNG"(with alpha, if you need a transparent BG).

could it be because DV NTSC doesn't have square pixels? maybe QT knows to show them correctly, but FC treates it as non square pixel?

Either way - use 'animation' or 'PNG' like slowtiger suggested

Thanks, gentlemen. Will do.
I resisted them because I'm not familiar with the set up in FCP for Animation or PNG codecs. I was also concerned about having additional renders in the FCP timeline using those codecs.
Nonetheless I'm grateful for your advice and will follow it dutifully.

funks, you raise an interesting question:

"could it be because DV NTSC doesn't have square pixels? maybe QT knows to show them correctly, but FC treates it as non square pixel? "

It might appear that way. although FCP and Qtime run off the same Qtime engine. (Incidentally all television uses non-square pixels.)
I have to say the responsibility resides with AS; they call their output "DV/NTSC". It should therefore work properly with the top video editing systems.
-Craig

ps i'm in the process becoming an AniMayTOR!

FYI I've only been animating for two weeks.

slowtiger wrote: try some codec like "animation" or"PNG".

ST, How do I export in Animation codec? I don't see that as one of my options.
Also what's the deal with "batch export"? Will that serve me in my workflow?
I've got 27 ten second scenes. My strategy is to make 27 project with 27 exported clips. I'll then put them altogether in FCP. Does that sound right?

Thanks,
Craig

The only thing I can add is that no professional will ever output animated files, but rather output single frames to put together in whatever editor they are using.

I use premiere, but I'm sure FCP will do the same -- and the rendering time should be a wash (or better, as your editor will nearly always render your final output much much faster than AS can).

So, the rule is to output BMP or TGA (or whatever) and then drag these sequences into FCP and do the final from there. Note this has the added benefit of being able to rerender only a frame or two (or part of a sequence) if you need to change something (not as critical in 2D but for 3D work it's the only way even amateur shops can make a go of out. With our render farm we still needed overnight to do even a 3 minute sequence, and losing a frame or two (or more) was a common occurrence).

thanks for your input MK,

I just created a PNG from AS. I brought it into FCP. I'm using it in a DV timeline (the finished product is for YouTube).
Inside FCP it is visually identical to the quicktime version of the same animation.