Automatic Duck Pro Import AE 5.0 User Manual

Pro!Import!AE 5.0
User Guide

last updated October 16, 2011

About Pro Import AE

Pro Import AE is Automatic Duck's oldest plug-in, first released in the spring of 2001.
This plug-in imports into After Effects AAF and OMF files from your Avid, XML files from
Final Cut Pro as well as Motion project files.

Using Pro!Import!AE

To use Pro Import AE you must first export from Final Cut Pro an XML file, an AAF or
OMF 2.0 file from your Avid editing system, or if you're translating a Motion project you
can just save the .motn project file.

Once you have the file that Pro Import AE can read importing it is as simple as choosing
the file in Pro Import AE's import dialog, setting any options then let it rip.

How to Import

To access Pro!Import!AE, select it
from the File->Import submenu, or
right-click/control-click in your project
pane and select it from the Import
menu.

The upper part of the Pro Import AE
dialog is the file chooser where you
select the file(s) you wish to import.

Below the file chooser is a summary of
Pro Import AE's settings. Click the Edit
Settings button to change these
options.

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Settings

The settings dialog is organized into two tabs, the Footage and Media tab for options
dealing specifically with the imported media files and the Comp and Layers tab that has
settings for how the composition is created and layers added.

Footage and Media

In After Effects parlance the media that gets imported into After Effects to potentially be
used in a composition is referred to as footage. In this section of Pro Import AE's
settings you tell the plug-in how you would like it to deal with these footage items.

Field Separation

Sometimes you need to instruct After Effects to separately calculate each field of your
interlaced footage, doing so is called Field Separation

Explaining when you need to do this, or
why you need to do this, is outside the
scope of this document. After Effects'
help has always been a good resource,

indeed the writer of this user guide
remembers that even though he had studied broadcasting in college it was the After
Effects 3.1 user guide that gave him his first good explanation of interlaced video.

Set file type for typeless media

There are two ways for a file to identify to

the operating system what kind of file it

is, either by having a file extension in the

name (everyone knows what a file whose

name ends in .doc is) or on the Mac by

using a four-character file type that is

stored inside the file. If the file type is not
set, and the file does not have an extension your Mac won't know which application to
use to open the file, and in the Finder you'll often see files like this indentified by a plain
document icon or a Unix icon.

After Effects CS3 and CS4 can be a little forgiving of files without an extension and file
type and still allow them to be imported. After Effects CS5, however, will not import
these files.

Pro Import AE offers to set the file type of an extensionless typeless QuickTime media
to "MooV", preventing your import from failing.

This option is only necessary to be used if you are using After Effects CS5.

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Validate timecode of found Final Cut media

Sometimes customers run into a situation
where they have multiple copies of a
media file available on their system, each
with different durations perhaps due to
running stuff through FCP's Media
Manager. In a case like this when Pro

Import AE searches for media to import
into After Effects it is possible to connect up with the wrong media file, producing
undesirable results.

When you enable this option Pro Import AE will open the candidate media files it finds
and verify the start timecode of the file matches what the FCP XML file says it should
be.

This does slow down the import somewhat, but if you are in a situation where it is
necessary to enable this feature you won't mind.

Replace proxy footage with related R3D media files

Often you're editing in Final Cut Pro not
with original R3D files, but instead with
lower resolution proxy QuickTime media
created by using Log & Transfer. When
Final Cut Pro creates this proxy media it
also saves into the Final Cut project

information about the R3D file from which
the proxy was generated. Pro Import AE offers you the option to import these R3D files
into After Effects instead of the smaller proxy media.

This option probably only works if you have used FCP's Log and Transfer tool to create
your proxy media files. If you create proxies using an outside application Final Cut Pro
has no knowledge of the original R3D media files and so this information can't make it
into the XML file for Pro Import AE to do something about.

Since your R3D files are probably larger than your proxy material you will also want to
use the Override composition setting option.

This option requires you be using at least After Effects CS4 version 9.0.2 with the RED
plug-in installed, or After Effects CS5.

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Avid Media options

After Effects cannot by itself play all Avid media files, indeed when Automatic Duck
started After Effects couldn't read any Avid media files. Pro Import AE's way around this
has always been to "fool" After Effects into playing Avid's OMF and MXF media files via
QuickTime reference movies. This generally works well, but there are situations where
other options would be more desirable.

Connect After Effects directly to Avid media files

When you choose this option Pro Import AE will assume that After Effects will be able to
directly read your Avid's OMF or MXF media files, either all by itself or via a QuickTime
component such as those from MXF4Mac and Calibrated Software. Pro Import AE does
not check to make sure After Effects will be able to use the media files diretly, it
assumes that if you enabled this choice you know what you're doing.

Create QuickTime reference movies to Avid media files

This is the method Pro Import AE has used to get Avid media into After Effects since the
very beginning in 2001. It works very nicely but the complex relationship between After
Effects, the reference movies and the Avid media files can cause problems when you
resurrect and old project or when you need to move a project to another system.
However practically no additional storage space is required when you use reference
movies, because these pointer files are tiny.

Flatten reference movies to Avid media

Enable this option and Pro Import AE will create self-contained media files for After
Effects. These files are not reference movies, they have no dependence on the Avid
media files. This obviously requires more storage space, but this option is better for
transporting or archiving projects.

Add layers for rendered Avid media

Pro Import AE cannot translate most
effects from an Avid into After Effects,
Avid in their wisdom has always kept the
parameters of their effects encoded so
third parties couldn't read them.
Automatic Duck has decoded some effect
parameters such as position, scale and
opacity from effects like PIP and

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Superimpose, but if you have a third party AVX effect applied it will not be translated.

If you have a sweet effect that you created in the Avid and want to bring that into After
Effects you can enable this option and as long as you have rendered the effect before
you export from the Avid, Pro Import AE will create a separate layer pointing to the Avid
rendered media file.

The original layer is also added to the comp so you have yourself a choice to use the
Avid rendered layer, the original layer, or perhaps a combination of the two. It is up to
you. The rendered layer's visibility switch is set to off, simply turn it on if you wish to
include it.

Search for original imported graphics files

When you import a file into an Avid
editing system, it creates new OMF or
MXF media to edit with. Depending on
the setup, the resulting Avid media could
be highly compressed and perhaps
downscaled so when you bring this
sequence into After Effects you might
prefer instead to use the original graphics

files you originally imported into the Avid.

When you have this option enabled Pro Import AE looks in your AAF file for information
your Avid stored about the media file (like a .mov) that you imported into your Avid. This
original file is then searched for, not the MXF media file your Avid created as a result of
your file import.

Do not search these volumes

Pro Import AE spends a lot of time
searching for media files. This is because
the file path stored in the Final Cut XML
file is no longer valid or in the case of an

Avid OMF or AAF there may only be hints
about where to find the media. There may be certain places on your computer, however,
that you don't want Pro Import AE to look in for media.

To keep Pro Import AE from searching certain volumes enable the checkbox then select
the volume name from the popup menu.

Independent of this setting you can also cause individual folders to be ignored by
surrounding the folder name in parentheses. For example the folder "(hidden media)"
and its subfolders would never be searched.

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Custom search paths

Just like you might want to instruct Pro Import AE to never search certain places you
might also want to give the plug-in some priority locations where the plug-in should
search for media files. Pro!Import!AE will search these locations you add to this list
before any other.

This is especially useful on Windows where the plug-in is not able to search the entire
system for media files.

Comp and Layers

Audio Layers

Final Cut Pro and Avid editing systems express the clips on each track individually,
therefore what you think of as one clip containing video and two audio channels actually
presents itself as three in the XML, AAF and OMF files. This means that single clip will
make three layers in After Effects. You might like that, you might not, but we offer you
controls to make you happy either way.

Ignore

This is self-explanatory, right? Audio clips are ignored with this selection.

Add Normally

When this is selected each audio clip on each track is created as a separate layer in
After Effects.

Place in Subcomp

This option helps reduce the number of layers in your comp and moves all of the audio
layers into a nested composition.

Enable on Video Layers

Only applicable to FCP XML imports, this option does not create any audio layers in
your After Effects Composition, instead layers that use footage containing audio will
have their audio enabled as well as their picture.

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Override composition setting preset

Sometimes you want your After Effects comp to be setup differently than your editing
timeline was set, you can use this setting to override how the new comp is created.

The composition created by Pro Import AE will match the size and frame rate defined by
the selected preset.

Customizing the preset list

Unfortunately Pro Import AE is not able to read comp presets from After Effectsʼ
preferences, so we have built our own XML settings file you can edit if you would like to
modify the contents of this menu.

On Mac OS X, you can find an alias to the file “ADCompPresets.xml” located inside the
plug-in package. Locate your After Effects plug-ins folder and in there you should be a
file called AutoDuck Pro Import AE.plugin. In the Finder, right-click (or hold Control
down while click-ing on the package) and a contextual menu will appear. Choose
“Show Package Contents” and a new Finder window appears. Open the Contents
folder and “ADCompPresets.xml” will be in there. Open this file in your favorite text
editor. We like TextWrangler, it is free!

On Windows, you can find the “AECompPresets.xml” file located inside the “Supporting
Files” folder which should be located at the same location as “AutoDuck Pro Import
AE.aex” inside an “Automatic Duck” folder in your After Effects plug-ins folder. Open this
file in a text editor like Notepad.

You will see the presets shown in the XML file plus instructions for how to format
additions you make to the file. Just add new lines in the format shown, save the file and
relaunch After Effects and you should see your custom setting appear in the list.

Layer step options

Some users work in AE with their clips “stepping up” the timeline, while others prefer to
“step down”. Which is better? Who knows, but Pro Import AE gives you a choice.

When Layers step up in comp is selected, layers from earlier in the comp appear lower
in the layer order and later clips appear higher. The clips look like stairs going upwards.

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