Script development feedback required: Split AE Layer by EDL

Hi folks,

I'm new here so let me know if this is the wrong forum or anything. I just wanted to get some feedback on a script I am currently developing. It splits a layer at edit points taken from an EDL. Let me explain why I think this is useful and how I came up with the idea and a bit of the background so you can understand why most of the existing solutions that solve a similar problem (Automatic Duck, Final Cut XML -> AE) don't work for me.

I study directing at an idependent film school in Berlin. I am one of the guys there who like to do color correction, and, as a long time user of After Effects, I really like to do it with AE (Cudos at this point for the CC rebel tools and the great CC Plugins you co-developed, Stu!). But since nowadays most students edit their films on their own laptops, everyone uses a different editing package and so they usually hand me one big video file (encoded in a lossless codec, of course) representig the final edit of their film. What I want then is to have an After Effects composition with all the cuts (and ideally fades) from the final edit. I used to do this by hand for a couple of films, but that's pretty boring work, or grade it in the editing app but then the quality is lacking. Of course there is Automatic Duck, but that references the original source files (which in most cases is nice), but for our workflow one big losslessly encoded file is actually more useful - if only it wouldn't be so much work to set all these cuts again.

So I set out to write a script that loads an EDL and splits one layer in an after effects composition at the edit points described in the EDL (I chose EDL because all but the most braindead editing programs can output some flavour of EDL). There are two problems with this that I am aware of so far: this only works for one video track since EDLs only ever describe one Video Track but most editors like to use several tracks, and there can sometimes be edit points that do not show in the final video and therefore you don't want the layer in AE to be split at that point. To handle these situations, I am currently busy implementing an optional intermediate step in which the layer only gets marked with layer markers at each edit point, then the user can delete redundant markers and then a second script splits at all remaining layer markers.

There is also the problem that there are a lot of slightly different EDL formats, but I think those problems can be ironed out over time.

Does anyone here think that such a script could be useful to them? Does anyone here have additional suggestions in terms of functionality? I plan to release the script under a very liberal (GPL / CC) license so that others can improve upon it if needed. I would like to use you rebels here in this forum as my primary beta tester crowd since I think this is the place where most people who can put this to good use come togehter.

Daniel

P.S.: Thanks Stu for creating this forum and writing the great rebels guide that so neatly sums up what I have tried to do since I first saw aftereffects and that showed me a lot of things I didn't know before!

That does sound like a very useful script. But, in the event of the edit being done in premiere, doesn't loading the premiere project into AE accomplish the same thing? I know you're talking about being able to handle EDLs from several different NLE's..

Hi tcindie,

If you work on the same computer where all the source files are available then yes, the nicer route from premiere is directly via the project import into AE. But if you don't wont to copy all source material used (because that is on the editors hd and occupies hundreds of GB) then it might still make sense to export the final cut as one lossless compressed file and import it into AE with all the edit points via an EDL, I think.

Actually, I could have used this this past weekend.. if I were able to use an EDL from final cut to populate the timeline in AE on my PC with the proper clips it would have saved me having to recut the whole film in premiere.. Wink

Guys, I'm trying to understand what you are talking about, but I have no idea about FCP. I'll try to say what I'm doing, you tell me if it means anything.

Myself and another are cutting a trailer together with PremProCS3. Another editor or two will be doing a cut in FCP. We will all have the same footage on HDDs, so getting everyone the clips is no problem, but ultimately it will be worked by me in PPcs3. So would this script help bewteen myself and the FCP editors? Does the fact that we all have the same footage make it unnecessary?

Sorry. I am highly untechnical so I really strain a few brain cells thinking about this stuff.

Thanks,

GageFX

No, the script we're talking about would be specifically for bringing things into After Effects for Onlining..

It would, as I understand it, import an EDL, and lay out the clips in the proper places on the timeline in the AE project.

For going from Premiere to FCP I think you need Automatic Duck, but I'm not 100% on that.

In THEORY -- Going from FCP to Premiere, you could have the FCP editors export quicktime reference files for all the clips on the timeline, they would reference the unedited footage, so there would be no degradation, and smaller files to pass back and forth. The reason I say in theory is because the actual source files would have to be the same format (i think) which means your source footage will probably have to be quicktime. Not sure how that works with HD, because the Apple intermediate codec isn't compatible with PCs, and capturing on a mac captures to AIC, unless you use a tool to capture the m2t's, but I don't think m2t's are compatible with FCP.. It's a big pain in the ass, which is why I ended up redoing the entire edit this past weekend... The inconsistent formats utilized by NLEs on either platform combined with the fact that HDV is a rather finicky format makes this kind of job (PPro -> FCP, or FCP -> PPro) a giant pain.

LOL.

	Quote:
	I am highly untechnical so I really strain a few brain cells thinking about this stuff.

	Quote:
	.....because the Apple intermediate codec isn't compatible with PCs, and capturing on a mac captures to AIC, unless you use a tool to capture the m2t's, but I don't think m2t's are compatible with FCP....

WHAT????

It would then be going into AE for some CC and MB Looks. There will also be some VFX that need to be done.

It's not HD, so I dont know if that matters.

You hurt my brain.

Rolling Eyes

-gageFX

	GageFX wrote:
	You hurt my brain.

I think I hurt mine too. Smile

It might not be as big of an issue with standard def, but I've always had a problem going from mac to PC.. seems to work alright going the other way though.

Your best bet though might just be to have the guy editing on the mac to export back to tape, then pull that back in on the PC.. But, I guess with this script you should be able to just export an EDL from final cut and pull it into AE that way.

A quick google search revealed that you should be able to export either an EDL or AAF from final cut, and premiere should be able to import it. The caveat is that transitions aren't supported, and neither are final cut titles/quick text. BUT to get the basic cut, you can import a final cut EDL or AAF into PPro or AE. Smile

Wow. Thanks. It seems there are a handful of options. That's good.

-GFX

Hi,

there seems to be some confusion about what options are available now and what the script I am writing will be able to do. Let me try to clarify:

Let's assume you shot some footage, let's say 3 clips for a test sequence. Let's call them A, B and C, and to make things easier to understand I will repeat each clips letter a few times to express how long that captured clip is.

	Code:
	Clip A is 3 Minutes long: AAA Clip B is 5 Minutes long: BBBBB Clip C is 2 Minutes long: CC

You import that into your editing software of choice and cut the sequence. Let's say it turns out to be BBAC (two minutes of B, then one of A an done of C). We'll call this sequence S.

Let's start with the easiest case: You assembled sequence S in Premiere Pro and want to grade it in After Effects. In this case, simply import the premiere project into after effects. What you will get is a composition that references the original clips. This gets hard to visualize with just text here, but let me try (lowercase letters mean part of the original clip that is before its in or after its out point and therefore not visible)

Code:

Layer3: cC
Layer2: Aa
Layer1:BBbb

When you play this sequence in AE, you will see BBAC because of the in/out points, but if you decide that with the grading it would be nice to make A visible a bit longer then you could easily do that because your composition references the original source material
Case two: you edit it in some other editing program and want the same behaviour as before (you want to reference the original source clips), or you want to go from one editing software to another (e.g. you start a rough cut in Premiere, then want someone else to do the fine edit in FCP). For this, the best thing you can do is buy Automatic Duck. It was made for exactly this purpose. I have never used it myself but it get's a lot of praise from the people who did use it.
Special case FCP -> AE. If you want the same behaviour as before but only have to go from FCP -> AE you can use this script with XML export: creative worklow hacks script
Now a different scenario: Someone else edited the sequence and the original clips are huge and you don't want/need references to the original source clips (you would have to have them all availeable on your disk). So you get Sequence S as one losslessly compressed file (.avi encoded with the Lagarith Codec or quicktime with PNG or similar). If you import this into AE you get this (step 1):

Code:

Layer1:BBAC

To be able to properly grade this you need to manually cut after BB and after A so it looks like this (step 2):

Code:

Layer3: C
Layer2: A
Layer1:BB

Now you can apply different corrections to each clip. Note that contrary to the case before you can't extend the length of A in AE now because it all comes from one video file where all edits are final.

Setting all the edit points again in AE is pretty simple for just 2 edits, but for real film this quickly gets annoying.

This is where my new script would come in: export an EDL from your editing software of choice along with the final edit video file, then import the video file into after effects, make a new composition, drag the video file into it, make sure it's selected and run my script. It asks you for the EDL to use and does the layer splitting (going from step 1 mentioned above to step 2) for you, automatically.

So, the question is, who here would have use for this script?

Amazingly clear explanation. I am also happy to report that that's how I originally understood it. Yeah!!! Very Happy

My brain IS working! Doesnt happen often. Embarassed

Now, let me get THIS straight: this script would only be used if the cut coming in from the editor WAS the actual FINAL CUT and the script is being used for the sole purpose of giving the final cut sequence to the grader for onlining. Did I follow that correctly?

Sounds like a damn fine script. Not sure if I would ever need it, though. Personally. I think I'd want control over extending/clipping the edited clips.

Sorry for the the confusion.

-GageFX

Me, absolutely. Smile

I'd use it

_________________
http://www.brainsquestionmark.com/blog/

	tcindie wrote:
	capturing on a mac captures to AIC, unless you use a tool to capture the m2t's,

Just to clarify... Macs can capture and edit with native HDV files, among many other HD codecs. AIC is an option, but not a necessity. This has been true with FCP since v5. I believe iMovie defaulted to AIC automatically until the latest version.

I think we all would agree that greater cross-platform codec compatibility would be a Good Thing.

_________________
Jamie
www.crashandannie.com

Ahh.. I was unaware of that, thanks for clearing that up.. and YES.. cross-platform play-nice-with-each-other-ed-ness would be appreciated. Very Happy