HDV-timeline from FCP (mac) to Premiere/AE (windows)?

[Jan van der Ven]

Hello everybody,

My colleague (who uses FCP on a Mac) and I (Premiere/After Effects CS4 on windows) are trying to find out how to transfer his FCP-HDV-timeline to mine in Premiere or After Effects.

Firstly we have noticed that footage captured on a mac by FCP doesn't seem to play in Windows. Is there a more windows-compatible way of capturing footage into a mac computer?

Also we haven´t managed to correctly transfer the FCP timeline itself. We tried exporting an OMF file from FCP and importing it into After Effects with Automatic Duck, but without usable results.

Any suggestions on this?
Experiences?

Thanks very much in advance,
Greetings,
Jan

[Wes Plate]

Firstly we have noticed that footage captured on a mac by FCP doesn't seem to play in Windows. Is there a more windows-compatible way of capturing footage into a mac computer?

Depends on your source material. If you captured to ProRes there is a Windows decoder available from Apple. What codec did you capture to?

Also we haven´t managed to correctly transfer the FCP timeline itself. We tried exporting an OMF file from FCP and importing it into After Effects with Automatic Duck, but without usable results.

Don't export an OMF file from Final Cut Pro, instead export an XML file. Pro Import AE imports XML files from Final Cut Pro.

[Jan van der Ven]

Hello Wes Plate,

Thanks for your reply.

Depends on your source material. If you captured to ProRes there is a Windows decoder available from Apple. What codec did you capture to?

My colleague captured the footage (from his Canon XH-A1) directly into FCP, so I guess this means he hasn't used ProRes?

Don't export an OMF file from Final Cut Pro, instead export an XML file. Pro Import AE imports XML files from Final Cut Pro.

Oh I'm sorry, I meant XML!
No OMF was exported, we used an XML.

Thanks again,
Jan

[Wes Plate]

My colleague captured the footage (from his Canon XH-A1) directly into FCP, so I guess this means he hasn't used ProRes?

Your subject says HDV so I'm guessing that's what the media is. Your FCP editor should be able to tell in an instant what the codec is, though, and if what he is using isn't Windows-compatible then use the Media Manager in FCP to recompress to a codec that you can open in Windows (like ProRes).

Oh I'm sorry, I meant XML!
No OMF was exported, we used an XML.

Then you shouldn't have had any issues getting into After Effects using Pro Import AE. Please create a support ticket at Automatic Duck, Inc. and send as much detail as you can about the problem you had. Screenshots are always welcome if they help us understand the problem.

[Jan van der Ven]

Thanks again for your help, we will look at these options soon.

Cheers
Jan