blog bomb – FCP -> AE CS4

It used to be you needed to send 500 bucks to Wes Plate and use his Automatic Duck to go from FCP to After Effects.  Not anymore…

First, send your heartfelt apologies along to Mr. Plate.  He’s awesome.  Then, check out Adobe’s video tutorial.  Rory, eat your heart out.  Now you’ve got a business justification to upgrade to CS4.  And if you’re too lazy to wade through the entire 8min video, the breakdown is:

1. In FCP, export Apple XML v4

2. Open in Premier CS4

3. Highlight clips in timeline, create new After Effects composition.

4. Bonus option, alternatively send from Premier to Encore to make a Blu-Ray disc project.

Of course some of you may deem this as totally silly.  We’ve already got a compositing application in FCS 2 called Motion!  And even Shake can get stuff from FCP!!  Why got to Adobe!?

Well, as a Motion 3 Apple Certified Trainer I applaud your retort and encourage your passion.  But as a real world Editor / Producer, a lot of times the Graphics company I contract with doesn’t work with Motion.  Yes, I would prefer that they did and sent me all my opens, transitions, and lower thirds as Motion Master Templates.  Alas, AE users die hard, just like Avid editors.

So this is good news for us FCP editors who want to string out a sequence with a couple of edits and then hand it off to an AE shop to sexy it up.  Just make sure you media manage your media correctly.  Hrmmm, maybe that’s a topic for a soon to be released FCProse video tutorial…

proactively • not drinking the koolaid, just pointing it out on the buffet line • peter

And here’s a little bit of Vimeo random contact awesomeness.  Watch it in HD, you won’t be disappointed.

Hey, they used After Effects in this so it’s got a little bit of relevancy. Kinda…