Workflow advice: V8>AE Magic bullet colorista>tv

essami wrote on 12/11/2007, 10:34 AM
Hi,

I'm getting my Vegas Pro 8 upgrade any day now and Im looking for some advice on how to get my work flowing smooth :)

I'm gonna edit HD (Sony PMW-EX1, when it arrives finally!) and miniDV material in Vegas Pro 8. I want to color correct with Magic Bullet colorista in After Effects.

1) How should I render the final edited project from Vegas to AE to keep the best quality for color correction? Render SD as DV Pal and HD with the appropriate HD settings. You cant export EDL to AE and edit direct form the orginal files?

2) Once I've done the color correction in AE I want to deliver to dvd and tv stations. Usually I've sent a BetaSP tape to Music TV and DVD's to other stations. Should I render from AE directly after color correction? I assume so since doing a render to Vegas first would be doing it twice?

Well all this is pretty basic but incase I'm missing out on something or you think I might run into issue with this I'd like to hear your advice!

Thanks

Sami

Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 12/11/2007, 11:05 AM
Mike Jones said it well in the DMN post referenced in the other thread on AE:

What you'll need to work out too is a workflow between Vegas and AE. Not hard at all but you'll need to get familiar with lossless codec options for outputting from AE to put into sequence in Vegas. For video-based work (HDV or DV) i'd advise Quicktime Component Video codec asa good option, this is 4:2:2 lossless. Big files but holds all quality. If you're working in HDV then Cineform is good to. particularly if you're already using Cineform intermediate for your HDV editing in Vegas then you can out put effects, composits, title sequences etc from AE in the same codec that your project footage is in Vegas and still have it be a lossless codec that will hold up very well when final conform (out to DVD or whatever) comes. if you're making title sequences and the like in AE where its mostly text and graphics (not video from camera) then Animation codec Quicktime is also good.

4:2:2 makes a big difference. Don't do color correction and compositing in 4:2:0 if you can help it, you'll see a big difference in quality.
Shergar wrote on 12/11/2007, 11:09 AM
I modified an AE script from DanyX on the Rebel Cafe forum to achieve exactly this workflow - it's working fine for me.

Basically the process is

1) picture lock your edit in VP8
2) smart render your project to copy your footage into a single file without re-compression
3) create a Vegas .txt EDL file
4) import the footage file into AE
5) run the script on the EDL to split the footage file so you have your project in AE with each clip as a separate layer, ready for color correction, VFX or whatever.

The script is available here, user documentation in the header
http://www.storitel.com/public/EDLSplitter

I think this is better than Cineform or Quicktime, because it uses your original footage in AE, rather than adding an interim render stage. And yes, no point in bringing back into Vegas if you're going this route ... use AE for your output renders

Paul
essami wrote on 12/11/2007, 11:17 AM
>4:2:2 makes a big difference. Don't do color correction and compositing in 4:2:0 if you can help it, you'll see a big difference in quality.

This is something I've never understood really well. If Im shooting HD at 4:2:0 or miniDV (which is what 4:1:1???). Aren't these numbers referring to compression while recording the data to the cameras tape or memory card? And then I take this recorded material to Vegas or AE and it is what it is. I cant make it better by rendering 4:2:2 file from Vegas can I? Uh, confusing...

Sami
Coursedesign wrote on 12/11/2007, 1:42 PM
When you do color correction (a broad area these days), compositing, etc. on 4:2:0 video, the work is done in 4:4:4 before being chopped down to the format you're using.

You get twice as much color information in 4:2:2 output as in 4:2:0.

Even without doing anything to the footage other than chroma smoothing (creating the missing chroma samples intelligently), you can see a difference.
essami wrote on 12/11/2007, 1:54 PM
>When you do color correction (a broad area these days), compositing, etc. on 4:2:0 video, the work is done in 4:4:4 before being chopped down to the format you're using.

>You get twice as much color information in 4:2:2 output as in 4:2:0.

Wow, this is all new to me, how do I choose the output? Im only aware of choosing between 8bit and 32bit in Vegas.

And thanks for all the replies, still a lot to learn I see :)

Sami
essami wrote on 12/12/2007, 2:47 AM
Been doing some reading and as I understand it Vegas works 4:4:4 internally. So I just need to make sure when i render to After Effects I render with good codec thats lossless.

But if I was to color correct inside vegas and render from vegas to dvd or necessary format I wouldnt have to worry about this?

Sami
Shergar wrote on 12/12/2007, 4:13 AM
the approach i use as described above does not re-encode your footage - so it passes directly into AE without recompression. this is achieved by rendering from VP8 with settings equal to your footage properties - for example in my case HDV 1080i. as long as you apply no effects in VP8, it will output the original footage frames without any re-encoding.

Another way into AE is to create an AAF from VP8 and import it - but I found that AE often crashes loading Vegas AAFs

You're correct that if you decide to do all of your color correction and fx in Vegas, no need to worry about AE at all.

However it's arguable that AE provides more/better color correction options than VP8 and certainly there are more plugins available for AE. For example Colorista and Magic Bullet Looks are not available for Vegas (yet).