FCP 2 SHAKE can and cannots
by Rajiv Rai
on
Jul 6, 2006 at 10:45:17 am
hi guys Im an FCP editor, about to journey into shake and i have some very important question. My boss just decided to get shake to accompany the FCP suite in terms of offline to online. where i do the offline in FCP then move it to Shake for online. Now from what i gather audio from FCP cannot be imported from the FCP time as well as my motion effects which includes scale, position rotate & etc... also no filters and speed ramps, no composite modes, generators and stills.
OK being an offline editor when i send out an EDL i dont get to send out info on filter,composite modes,generators and stills which is fine. BUt what if i have scaling and intensive motion effects like positioning, rotating, crops, dirtorts & etc, then what happens? as well as speed ramps. if i cant import motion effects and speed ramps its going to be very difficult for me to match back my moves manually.... is there a solution or is my boss about to put me through a lot of shit?
Re: FCP 2 SHAKE can and cannots by Zak Mussig on Jul 6, 2006 at 3:27:05 pm
Rajiv,
I'm in about the same position that you are, with one big difference...
Make sure everyone where you work is clear that Shake isn't an online editing system, it's a compositing, motion graphics, and high-end effects program. You will send clips into Shake (presumably from FCP), modify them in some way (be it color correction, stabilization, or something heavier like compositing in a 3D background for your green screen shot), render the result out to a QT file (similar to how you'd export to QT from Motion or Livetype), and the resulting clip will replace (sit on top of) the original in your FCP timeline.
Just remember that FCP is your offline and online editor... you'll just recapture the footage from your rough cut with full-quality capture settings. Shake is for finishing clips... not projects.
Does anyone else have anything to add or amend? I'm just starting to use Shake, and that's my understanding of how it fits into the workflow.
Re: FCP 2 SHAKE can and cannots by Rajiv Rai on Jul 6, 2006 at 4:47:39 pm
Well can Shake except EDLs
Otherwise what should i do if i have, say a part in my sequence which has a lot of animated splitscreens around. should i render each clip as a separate quicktime file and import them into shake. or perhaps just lay them into my FCP timeline then move it to shake and animate them there.
Oh ya one more thing does shake accept transitions like cross dissolve and dip to color from FCP?
Re: FCP 2 SHAKE can and cannots by Zak Mussig on Jul 6, 2006 at 6:00:04 pm
Rajiv,
I'll reiterate that I'm new to this as well... a sort of take this as you like until someone else weighs in.
When sending clips to Shake from FCP nothing goes except the clip(s). No transitions. No Audio. No filters. etc. So for a split screen setup like you're talking about, I'd say stack your clips in an FCP sequence and get the timing about the way you want it, then select all of them, and send to Shake. All of your clips should (going out on a limb) come in with the timing right and over nodes to maintain your layer order. From there you can do what you please.
All of that said.., unless, or maybe even if, you are affecting these clips in some way (compositing, stabilization, color, etc.) in Shake, your split screen setup seems much more managable in an FCP timeline by setting scale and center keyframes for your clips in the motion tab. You may also want to give Motion a shot if your sequence isn't too long. I don't think Shake is the best program for what you're trying to do in terms of how you're cutting these clips together. Remember, FCP is your editor. That's where all the clips get edited together. Shake is for eye candy... and fixing eye sores.
It's just to get the right clips in, with timing. by stokestack on Jul 6, 2006 at 7:19:08 pm
The import to Shake is cuts-only. There are various reasons for this, but a big one is the totally different (and obscure) curve format used by FCP. For things like speed changes, FCP stores the data in curves that are unintelligible to Shake and so vastly different that attempting to convert them wasn't practical.
If you need a split-screen effect for a short shot, you can layer them and time them in FCP, and they'll come into Shake lined up temporally. You can then use Shake to position them and split the image as desired.
By default, Shake will render out to the same format as your timeline, but you might want to switch the FileOut to an uncompressed codec. It'll have to render in your FCP timeline, but you'll have your comp shots in an archival format. For example, if your footage is DV50 and so is your timeline, you can archive your camera original footage and you haven't lost anything. But if you bring that DV50 stuff into Shake and then write your comp out in DV50, you've just recompressed and degraded it. Better to render it out of Shake to uncompressed 8-bit when you're sure it's done, and then put those shots in storage with the rest of your footage in case you want to master a better format in the future.
Re: It's just to get the right clips in, with timing. by Deke Kincaid on Jul 8, 2006 at 11:06:36 am
>>The import to Shake is cuts-only. There are various reasons for this, but a big one is the totally different (and obscure) curve
>>format used by FCP. For things like speed changes, FCP stores the data in curves that are unintelligible to Shake and so vastly
>>different that attempting to convert them wasn't practical.
Shake has support for FCP curves, but it is commented out in the nreal.h file. This was 4.0 though, donno about 4.1.
It might answer a few of your questions. Or might not.
But it will get very confusing. As for time-remapping... when you import a clip from FCP into shake it takes the ENTIRE media clip with it, not just what's on the timeline. This makes it hard to do time remapping directly from FCP. I usually export as self contained QT file and do any remapping in shake and import back to FCP. However, straight SPEED changes can be done effectivly from FCP to shake.
I'm in over MY head with the basic question you ask, but I'd say -- treat SHAKE like the seperate software it is at this point. You can rough it out in FCP or you can rough it out in Shake... but when going ONLINE complete the project seperately with self contained clips for later import. Again, I'm over my head here.
Re: FCP 2 SHAKE can and cannots by Zak Mussig on Jul 7, 2006 at 2:11:03 pm
Cap'n
I read a thread yesterday where some had the same problem you are with Shake importing the entire media without recognizing what portion was actually in the FCP timeline. As I recall, the solution was a check box somewhere in the send to Shake dialog that he said sent only the portion of the clip in the timeline. I realize that's really vague... but maybe there's some hope. That thread was either on CreativeCOW, Highend 3D, or Apple's discussion forums (did a lot of reading yesterday).
