VP9C / AE Workflow Question

mjroddy wrote on 1/17/2010, 9:59 PM
Everyone knows that Vegas is where you edit and do light compositing and CC.
But for heavier CC/composite/animation work, I've been finding myself turning to AE CS4.

I'm going for a very certain look and have about 40 clips, so each will have to be heavily CC'd.

What is the best workflow, assuming I want to do my rough and final edit in Vegas?

Option 1: Do it all in AE - yuk.
Option 2: Edit in Vegas, take notes to the Ins and Outs and reproduce the work in AE
Option 3: CC every shot in AE, render out (as Cineform, in this case) and rebuild in Vegas.
Option 4: Edit in Vegas, save the project as some kind of format that AE can open, Open that project and CC there, then render out the final file.

I welcome your input, advice and ideas! Thanks very much in advance!

Comments

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 1/18/2010, 2:10 AM
Do your edit in Vegas, then do your CC etc... in AE having rendered out the file from Vegas in a lossless format (eg, png seq, or png .mov file) I prefer the .png seq because then if there is a power outage, random crash for any reason, etc... you already have the part of the work done.

Alternatively you can frameserve.

Dave
farss wrote on 1/18/2010, 3:41 AM
I've had some joy saving a cuts only Vegas project as an AAF and then opening that in AE CS3.
A caveat though. From memory AE will create a layer for every event and that's one for vision and one for audio. So you can easily end up with a lot of layer in your AE project. Thankfully AE lets you work with lots of layers pretty easily, I've gone to well over 100 layers of HD and AE was barely raising a sweat

Bob.
ingvarai wrote on 1/18/2010, 4:25 AM
I do Vegas --> Lagarith AVI --> AE --> Lagarith AVI --> Vegas
if the workflow also involves ohter apps, like Mocha or SynthEyes, I do:
Vegas --> PNG sequence --> AE --> Lagarith AVI --> Vegas

I like image sequences more and more, so I tend to use them instead of AVIs. You can do magic to an image sequence in Photoshop, using automation. The use of Cineform I do not understand, unless you are short of disk space.
Edited:
I use AE a lot, but after having used it for some months, I have discovered that Vegas is much more powerful than I had imagined. So I wonder if CC work can as well be done in Vegas, if I only knew how to use the effects properly.. I also discovered that it is possible to have an "adjustment layer" in Vegas too, like we are used to in AE.
Ingvar
mjroddy wrote on 1/18/2010, 12:28 PM
Dave: I I am expecting to CC every shot just a little differently (long story), does your method still apply? Would you break the shots up in AE after importing the finished file?

Bob: This is kind of what I was hoping to see. The project is cuts-only, so this may well work.

Ingvar: I'll have to learn what Lagarith is. I've never seen that.
I'm using Cineform because my original files are from my Canon 5DM2 and nothing likes working with that format.
And, Yes, there will likely be some Mocha involved - yet another program I have to learn for this project...

Thanks very much for the Replies and ideas.
ingvarai wrote on 1/18/2010, 1:59 PM
here:
Lagarith
David Newman wrote on 1/19/2010, 11:44 AM
That will not address the luma range issues of Canon DSLR, if you use tools external to Vegas, the dynamic range of the Canon will be truncated when converted to any codec. NeoScene solves this using the 10-bit nature of the CineForm codec, so in this case it can be argued that a visually lossless (i.e. slightly lossly) codec like CineForm is far better than an mathematically lossless codec like Lagarith. This is addition to all the workflow benefits, as Neo it is not just a codec, the smaller file sizes, and extra speed, etc.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm
TomE wrote on 1/21/2010, 9:00 AM
Here is a recent tutorial for going from Vegas to AE -- (but not necessarily back again to Vegas)

http://www.bluefx.net/blog/import-sony-vegas-projects-to-after-effects/

Might come in handy.

Tom
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 1/21/2010, 11:02 AM
after seeing that AAF workflow - that's far superior than rendering out to PNG seq for cut only stuff, and if you're going back to Vegas again, you can just render the video out and then import to vegas and do your final audio work, and do a no-recompress render out or a different delivery format.

My way works, but this is far far easier for a cut only project.

if you were working with something that wasn't cuts only then my way would be fine I think, and as for each shot being a different coloring, I would simply import multiple files, and just import each sequence of PNG's in order as they came out of Vegas, and then plop them down on the T/L in that order also.

Dave