Resolve to After Effects

[kaylee]

Hi guys!

my 5d3 raw ML short is coming along, and my plan is to take the graded resolve edit into after effects for finishing, some compositing and touch up

1) does that sound ok? (lol)

2) whats the best practice for export?

3) anything i should know? i have no previous experience with the above

4) THANK Uuuuuuu

[kaylee]

hi

[kye]

In the absence of someone more knowledgable than me replying, one thing I have heard is that for compositing (ie, combining 3D renders into the footage) you want as much precision in the footage as possible so the tracking can be good enough.

This suggests rendering out of Resolve with a very high quality codec.  Perhaps something like Prores 4444 HQ?

[Jonesy Jones]

Kaylee. I’ve not done Resolve to AE. But I’ve often done Premiere to AE. Of course those two were made for each other, but the basic principle I believe is the same. 

In my experience and opinion, I’d save cc for last. Meaning, end in Resolve. If Resolve is your editor, begin there. Or Premiere, doesn’t matter. Any clips that are going to need fx work just keep in timeline as temporary placeholder. Once your timeline is edited, bring the clips that need fx work into AE and do your thing. Export those and then drop them back into your editor to replace their unfinished originals. Then color correct. 

Thats how I’ve done it. 

If an entire sequence needs fx you may consider exporting the whole thing and bringing into AE. But you’d probably still want to end with cc. 

To me the reason for ending with cc is that’s often where you push or pull the footage the most. Doing fx work after that could put too much strain on the footage. 

[Rinad Amir]

@jonesy jones thank you 

i was looking for that answer as well 

[KnightsFan]

1. Personally, I would composite first, and grade afterwards. However, I don't see any reason you can't do it the other way around if that workflow is easier for you. The benefit of compositing first is that you composite on the original footage, and render that once before the final export. Going the other way, you transcode, then composite, then render, then do the final export. It takes more time, and arguably reduces quality.

2. You want the highest quality possible without breaking your hard drive. I always render effects as lossless image sequences, either PNG or TIFF. If you want high bit depth, 16 bit TIFF is the way to go, since PNG is 8 bit except in rare circumstances. The benefit of an image sequence is that you can re-render specific sections without re-rendering the entire thing, which, depending on the effects, could save you a LOT of time. Again, if you composite first, you're only rendering out the effects once instead of twice, which saves a lot of HDD space.

3. Depending on your effects and how much you care about image fidelity, you might be able to simply render the effects from AE, and composite them in Resolve. That's what I do whenever possible. It saves rendering time and means no transcoding of any kind before rendering.

[OliKMIA]

On 7/30/2018 at 4:18 PM, kaylee said:

Hi guys!

my 5d3 raw ML short is coming along, and my plan is to take the graded resolve edit into after effects for finishing, some compositing and touch up

1) does that sound ok? (lol)

2) whats the best practice for export?

3) anything i should know? i have no previous experience with the above

4) THANK Uuuuuuu

1) Yes, you probably prefer Resolve for grading and you want to do it in that order. That's fine. Of course there is always some quality drop after each render with lossy codec but with the following settings it''s virtually impossible to notice over 2 layer of exports.
2) Any high quality codec with HQ settings such as Cineform 12bits (quality 5), ProRes 444, and DNxHD or DNxHR 444. Or TIFF as mentioned earlier for ultimate quality but that would be overkill I think.
3) & 4) Nope

[kaylee]

ahhh, thank you guys!

@ all:

i actually have a timeline in resolve that is 98% colored and complete, but i need to do some things in AE: some compositing that involves roto, and some retiming. i *could* do that stuff in fusion, but id have to download the new resolve (im running 14 right now), and thats more than id like to get into if possible.

my computer is also reaching its playback limitations in resolve at the moment. im good with just doing my composite shots in AE, and bringing them back into resolve to render the whole thing

thank you all for underscoring that an additional unnecessary rendering step is a bad idea!

[OliKMIA]

8 hours ago, kaylee said:

i actually have a timeline in resolve that is 98% colored and complete, but i need to do some things in AE: some compositing that involves roto, and some retiming. i *could* do that stuff in fusion, but id have to download the new resolve (im running 14 right now), and thats more than id like to get into if possible.

Just double check with a short sample in AE because sometime AE doesn't allow roto and masking with some intermediate codec (I had this problem in the past, I didn't dig much into it and I used another codec, perhaps the latest version of AE CC works now).

[KnightsFan]

I would not use dynamic linking (or whatever it's called with Resolve/Fusion) if you can avoid it. Just bring the original clip into the compositor of your choice, do the effects, and render out a new clip. Then replace the clip in Resolve. The key is to be organized, so you can easily remember which effects clips replace which raw clips.

You'll have no performance hit, fewer chances of crashing, and more control over what gets rendered when, and it will make no difference whether you use Fusion, AE, both, or something else entirely. No point forcing yourself to use a specific tool just because it's the same brand as your editor!

I do recommend learning Fusion at some point if you have a lot more VFX shots in the future. Fusion is much easier to composite with, AE is better for motion graphics animation.

[kaylee]

7 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

I would not use dynamic linking (or whatever it's called with Resolve/Fusion) if you can avoid it. Just bring the original clip into the compositor of your choice, do the effects, and render out a new clip. Then replace the clip in Resolve. The key is to be organized, so you can easily remember which effects clips replace which raw clips.

You'll have no performance hit, fewer chances of crashing, and more control over what gets rendered when, and it will make no difference whether you use Fusion, AE, both, or something else entirely. No point forcing yourself to use a specific tool just because it's the same brand as your editor!

I do recommend learning Fusion at some point if you have a lot more VFX shots in the future. Fusion is much easier to composite with, AE is better for motion graphics animation.

@KnightsFan

that is great info, thank you so much!!!