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Filed under: CS4 •Motion Graphics •Post Production •

Moving Footage From Final Cut Pro to After Effects

Direct Import of XML into After Effects

While its not supported directly, you may want to migrate media between Final Cut Pro and After Effects without using Premiere Pro. Fortunately XML is very flexible and there are third-party tools that allow this.

Footage ©Kuhn Foundation, from the series Closer to Truth Cosmos. Consciousness. God.

Free methods. We recommend downloading either of these After Effects scripts:

• Popcorn Island – www.popcornisland.com/after-effects/final-cut-2-after-effects.  We explored this workflow here on ProVideo Coalition already.
• Creative Workflow Hacks – www.creative-workflow-hacks.com

Paid method. If you need to move media between Final Cut Pro, Avid, and After Effects, Automatic Duck has workflow tools for you. Its solutions aren’t cheap, but they exchange much more than standard XML. You can hand off multiclips, keyframes, motion properties, markers, and even data between many third-party filters. You can find out more at www.automaticduck.com.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that cuts and basic properties like Scale, Position, and Opacity can be easily translated to After Effects. Your footage can be easily swapped with edits (and handles) in place. These techniques are much more efficient than media managing large projects and unnecessarily duplicating media.  If you do need to bundle up a project to send it off your network to another user, just use the Collect Files feature in After Effects.

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.

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