Footage ©Kuhn Foundation, from the series Closer to Truth Cosmos. Consciousness. God.
I am always on the lookout for things that can make my life easier… sleep in a can, comfortable shoes, great software.
If you use Final Cut Pro and After Effects… do I have a find for you! I just finished a new book called Video Made on a Mac, and in the process of writing about Motion Graphics workflows, I’ve discovered an absolute gem, from a little place called Popcorn Island.
From Final Cut Pro to After Effects
Getting your footage from Final Cut Pro to After Effects is a very common workflow. In fact, so many people choose to work this way that there are several free and for sale workflow tools on the market. But I have a new favorite.
The script Final Cut 2 After Effects supports the following features:
- Cross Dissolve Transitions
- Basic Editing Translation
- Segmented Clips
- Basic Keyframes
- Time Remapping
- Nested Sequences
- Multiple Frame Rates and Aspect Ratios
- Audio Channels
- Name Length Error Checking
- Support for PAL25 and 60
Oh and in case you missed it… FREE
Here’s how the process works:
- Download and install the After Effects scripts from here.
- Launch After Effects and Final Cut Pro.
- Open a Final Cut Pro project with media you want to exchange.
- Select one sequence in the Browser.
- Choose File > Export > XML. Choose XML Level 4.
- Target a location and click OK.
- Swith to After Effects and choose File > Scripts and select the newly loaded script (PI_FCP2AE.jsxbin).
- Navigate to the XML file you created in step 5 and click Open. The footage and a new composition are created in After Effects.
- Explore the composition and check the results.
Enjoy…
Also, be sure to check out the new book, Video Made on a Mac. More than 400 pages and 5.5 hours of video on Production and Postproduction Using Apple Final Cut Studio and Adobe Creative Suite.